Edition #38d Newsletter

I recently watched a special SBS presentation on the Slave Trade that existed between Africa, Europe and America for over 300 years, and which supposedly ceased in the late 1800's.
UNESCO has agreed to fund a study of this particular period, which in today's terms, was punctuated with a healthy dash of genocide and multiple crimes against humanity.
The reason for the study is that there is very little recorded in the history books of the countries that dominated the trade, and that many slave-derived communities, even generations past the events, are still traumatised.
The ruling classes of Europe and the Americas were the dominant forces behind the trade, and the motive was pure greed - profit no matter what the means.
I found the presentation quite historically interesting, but my ears pricked up when one of the presenters illustrated how the slave trade was one of the first truly globalised business operations, and one where human beings were treated as the commodity. They were bought and sold, and derived value as to the type of work they were capable of doing. Even the breeding qualities of the various African tribes had value, and those with the highest fertility rates we eagerly sought, so as to establish a "home gown" and perpetual supply of future slaves.
Muscle definition was also prized, because this meant more production in the fields.
Definitely "market needs"!

The SBS presenter then went on and compared the global company of the slave trade days to the global company of today.

Not much different!

Greed and profit predominate, people are basic commodities to be worked to the limit, and when they can no longer provide an economic benefit to the company, they are discarded.
And this is the danger.
Whole populations can be thrown into economic chaos when a corporation decides to relocate its enterprise, because of more favourable terms (usually a government incentive using taxpayer's money - much like the Mitsubishi company in South Australia currently).
This is supposed to be a good thing for the economy and create more efficient business structures.
Really?
Global companies have no social conscience, and appear to be able to inflict their particular brand of economic rationalism with impunity, because governments collude in the process.
A separate economy is generated through this elite of corporations trading among themselves, propped up by major banks.
This is why our major banks are closing branches and moving away from what are to them, small depositors, not worthy of servicing.
They are more than happy with the deposits made by global corporations alone.
The rest of us form a sub-economy, where very little wealth or benefit trickles down from where the main action is occurring.
Yet we are told we are enjoying good national economic growth!
It is only this elite and privileged strata that is being measured.
This translates to high levels of personal stress at the lower income end of the economic scale.
And as this transfer of wealth takes place, more and more people are finding themselves bound down as economic slaves.

There are many other instances, such as Third World countries, mired down in debt to the World Bank (dominated by Europe and the Americas), and having to submit to economic dictates, which bind them permanently in a form of economic slavery.
The wealth of the Western World, and the power derived from this wealth, is progressively being channeled into global corporations, and the people that run them.

So what has economic slavery got to do with pharmacy?

Well, judging from the complaints pouring in to Auspharmlist and other pharmacy publications, most community pharmacists are feeling like virtual slaves at the hands of the Health Insurance Commission on one hand, and the Australian Tax Office administering the GST on the other, plus satisfying paperwork demands from a variety of other interest groups.
And we are not alone.
At a recent conference held on the Gold Coast, The Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia (COSBOA) highlighted the imbalance that the GST was causing, when comparing Big Business to Small Business.
It was reported that the Taxation Commissioner's own estimate (pre-GST) that small business would incur compliance costs of $1235 p.a, medium firms would incur $4935, but large corporations would save $30,052 because of their economies of scale. These figures were wildly understated.
Compliance cost is simply code for paperwork, and the cost of the people who have to generate it.
You!
It also has the effect of creating a separate tax, because Small Business pays for the cost, and governments reap an economic benefit.
They literally get paid for very little work and are stealing proprietor time and money.
This has had an overall economic effect, where Big Business has been able to shed labour, but Small Business has been unable to do the same.
Small Business proprietors get stuck with all the additional work.
Paperwork is beginning to crush all Small Businesses, but nowhere in the Small Business arena has it been so intense as it has been for pharmacy.
The nightmare of having to administer the paperwork and make large GST payments on the purchase of stock, without being able to immediately recoup it through sales, has meant a cash flow deficit. This is further aggravated by slow payment of refunds by the ATO.

No wonder pharmacy morale is suffering!

COSBOA has started a campaign to get government to reduce paperwork and also to compensate small business for the paperwork done on behalf of the government. It is trying to take ownership of the paperwork away from the government, because governments are unwilling to employ the staff to complete their own work.
There is a lesson here for the Pharmacy Guild.
It must also look to own more of the pharmacy paperwok if it is to truly serve its members. This has to be an IT opportunity.
COSBOA also highlighted the fact that the Australian Tax Office was paid $900 million by the States to collect the tax, but this was being done by business itself. The cash-rich ATO is building its war chest to inflict more and more audits on Small Businesses, which also have to pay for themselves by finding fault with taxpayer deductions.
It has all the makings of a nightmare that will not go away.
Recent economic figures released at the conference indicated that national revenue went up 5.3 percent and job growth for the same period was 2.1 percent.
The top 1000 firms shed 1.4 percent of their labour force and their revenue went up 7.9 percent, which was nearly 3 percent over the national total.
All other businesses (SMEs) had a revenue growth of less than 2 percent coupled with an employment growth of 4.1 percent, roughly twice the national average.
The inference drawn from these figures is that Australia has an imbalanced economy, with small business becoming ever weighed down with an unsustainable workload.
Effective company tax rates also mitigated against Small Business, in that small companies paid 30.9 percent tax rate, compared to 16.5 percent for large corporations.
Small companies employed 51 percent of the workforce, but only had a 13 percent share of total company profits.
Large corporations then, had 49 percent of employment coupled with 87 percent of profits.

The writing is on the wall.

The only way pharmacy, and other small businesses, can get out of this quicksand, is to plan for a larger scale of economy and be faster on their feet, a traditional Small Business virtue.
New alliances need to be forged, as the older forms are too stultified and too concerned with their own imminent demise.
But if you are so worn out with paperwork and so busy trying to comply with accreditation processes and other inflictions, how can you get up to pace?

The other abomination that is blotting the landscape, the Medicare Number and the withholding of pharmacy payments, is proving a wonderful manipulative tool for the Heath Insurance Commission (HIC).
And to what end?
Fighting for economic survival by pharmacists takes time, and this is time that cannot be effectively recouped through implementing new services and provide better health outcomes.
What is the reasoning behind this?
Are we really being that ripped off by foreign visitors on such a scale that all pharmacists must bear the cost, virtually on a solo basis, compared with other stakeholders in the process?

Who wins?

Dare I suggest that all this pressure from the HIC and other sources is simply designed to demonstrate that existing pharmacy operators are not up to the job.
Who would replace them?
Well guess who - that group of corporations that is already receiving 87 percent of national profits and who are greedy enough to line up for more (supported, of course, by our fearless government).
They have been lobbying continuously while we thought we were "safe" under a Guild/Government agreement.

When I first began to publish this newsletter I made some pronouncements as to the effect that globalisation may have on pharmacy.
This was only two years ago!
Globalisation has only taken this short time to overwhelm the Australian Small Business sector (which includes pharmacy), and is leaving an ever widening trail of destruction behind it.
Many of my peers thought that I had lost the plot, but how many of you now believe that you are not part of the global slave trade, and that you will not reach a stage where you too are "used up"?
Of course, you can always work for a global corporation.

The Pharmacy Guild is ineffective to provide any sort of protection.
It has been paid off with large sums of government money, and you may have noted that not much has trickled down to the ranks.
If you are going to alleviate the pain, it will have to be at the local "grass roots" area, constructing newer and more interactive forms of political and business alliances.
The coming year of 2002 will be crunch time, and unless pharmacists go that extra mile of endurance, and put in some reconstructive work on a local collective basis, there will be a lot more human casualties than there currently are.

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