Agree with Red Ed

I never thought I would never agree with anything in Mr Miliband's economic policy. If you are wondering who Mr Miliband (or Red Ed as he is sometimes called) is, he is the head of the Labour Party in the UK. In case you haven't been looking, there is a general election about to happen in the UK, which nobody in the world other than the most dedicated Anglophile (this blogger is one) has even noticed. Such is the UK's relevance in the world today - how far has the Empire fallen.

Red Ed, is called so, because he is just one step short of being a Commie in economic policy. So how is it that I can agree anything at all with him ?

Well, he has just announced that he will control the infamous zero hour contracts that seems to be so popular with big employers in the UK.  I have blogged on this before and I find this practice an abomination.

Zero hour contracts are where you enter into a contract with a company which is as one sided as a contract can ever be. You are bound to the company - you have to come to work as soon as the company calls you. The company is bound to nothing - they don't have to call you even once. You sit every morning by the telephone, not knowing if you have work that day or not. If you are called, you have rush to work. They may call you to work for 1 hour, 3 or 5 or 8 - that is their choice. You have to take it and are paid by the hour. You can't work anywhere else because if you are called and you don't turn up instantly, you are fired. Obviously there are no benefits - no leave, no retirement benefits, no medical benefits, no nothing.

Predictably, Britain's companies are shouting down Red Ed.  They must be ashamed of their two facedness. Why don't the bosses be on zero hour contracts. On the days, when they are goofing around doing nothing, they shouldn't get paid. Not one senior manager in the UK is on zero hours contract. Frankly, they should all be - if they turn up for work only every alternate day, the company would actually do better. In the television interviews that are part of the election campaign, David Cameron, UK's Prime Minister and the leader of the Conservative Party had to admit that he himself could not live on a zero hours contracts. Red Ed has gleefully said that if something is not good enough for UK's Prime Minister, its not good enough for the people !

Both ends of the spectrum relating to employment are wrong. In the Red corner is France - with guaranteed life time employment, a million benefits and no obligation to work (in the public sector, at least). In the Blue corner is the UK where an employee is treated as a piece of shit and not a human being.  Both these systems deserve to be thrown into the dustbin.

Screw around with Kraft

What do you call something who is passed from hand to hand ? Used goods ? Probably something worse ? Well, that is what we have to call Kraft these days.

With a touch of slight (?) exaggeration, you could say that the land of mom and apple pie, could be stretched to include Kraft too ! Read on to see the list of brands this company owned at one time or the other, and even the Professor - he of the class war against processed foods - would have had one of those some time or the other. Its a quintessentially American company. And yet the way it has been sold and bought and sold and bought again makes somewhat depressing reading.

As is usual with many of the well known companies, there is always a visionary entrepreneur in the beginning. There was a James L Kraft. He was born in Canada, but emigrated to the Chicago in 1903 and started selling cheese from a horse drawn cart. In 1916 they developed a new process for pasteurising cheese, enabling it to be shipped long distances and patented it. Then came World War I, the need to provision the army and Kraft took off. In 1928 came Philadelphia cheese. In 1930 it merged with National Dairy, then the leading ice cream company in the US and became a full fledged Dairy Products company. 1926 saw Breyers, a famous ice cream brand;  1935, Sealtest, another iconic ice cream brand.  It grew and grew and became a globally recognised company and one of the giants of the food industry.

Then came 1980 and the barbarians. Wall Street types seem to have a peculiar fascination for Kraft and it become the favourite darling of deals. In 1980 a merger was engineered with Duracell and Tupperware. Immediately thereafter it sold all the non food businesses including Tupperware, but retained Duracell. In 1988 it sold Duracell to private equity firm KKR. In that mad winter of 1988, when dizzying deals were done, Kraft itself was acquired by Philip Morris (the largest tobacco company in the world) . Philip Morris merged Kraft with its General Foods business (of Maxwell House, Jell O, Kool Aid and Tang fame ) and created Kraft General Foods.  In 1990 they bought Jacob Suchard a big European coffee company and also the owner of Toblerone. In 1993 came Shredded Wheat. In 2000, Philip Morris acquired Nabisco and merged it with Kraft. Into the fold came Oreo, Chips Ahoy, Ritz, etc. In 2001 Philip Morris IPOed Kraft and it became an independent company again. In 2009, Kraft acquired Cadbury. In 2011 it split itself into two companies - the North American Kraft and the global Mondelez. And then last week, Warren Buffett and 3G bought out Kraft and will now run it together with Heinz which they already own.

Whew. That is a dizzying pace of changing of hands. How can a business survive this level of buying, adding, stripping and selling all the time. I wonder what the suppliers, consumers and employees make of all this. Businesses need some stability. Wall Street types doing financial engineering, don't do much for the long term health of the business.

There is one saving grace. Warren Buffett is not a wheeler dealer. He holds for the long term. Maybe Kraft will get some stability now.

APGA, Senator ask court to stop Buhari from contesting 2015 presidential election

The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and
one-time Senator representing Anambra North
Senatorial Zone, Alphonsus Igbeke, have gone to
court to stop the Presidential Candidate of the
All Progressives Congress (APC), General

•Text courtesy of Channels TV. Photo shows
Buhari.


Muhammadu Buhari (Rtd), from contesting in
the election.
In the suit filed at the Federal High in Awka the
capital of Anambra State, the plaintiffs claim
General Buhari had beached relevant provisions
of the constitution of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria and the Electoral Act 2010.
The Plaintiffs through their lawyer, Mr
Nsobundu, had filed a nine-paragraph
originating summon and a 22-paragraph
Affidavit in support before the court presided
over by Justice M.I. Abubakar in a suit number
FHC/AWKA/CS/117/2015 and dated March 12
2015.
In a press conference, Senator Igbeke said the
suit filed by himself and APGA, sought an order
declaring that General Buhari is not
constitutionally qualified for the office of the
president having failed to comply with the
provisions of section 131, sub-section A, C, and
D of the 1999 constitution of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria and section 31 of the
Electoral Act 2010.
He said it was contained in suit that the
candidate was seeking election on a non-existing
platform, the All Progressives Congress Party
(APCP), instead of the All Progressives Congress
(APC).
Senator Igbeke also said that General Buhari
failed to file his birth certificate, failed to
provide evidence of meeting educational
qualification for contesting for president and
also made a false claim in his voter card of
being a civil servant.
A school attended by General Buhari had in the
heat of the certificate controversy released
General Buhari’s statement of result.
General Buhari had also dismissed the claims
that he had did not possess the required
credentials to vie for the position of the
President.

UTME candidates grumble over sudden cut of exam time, decry CBT system

Photo of a UTME student 

Many of the candidates writing the ongoing Joint
Admissions and Matriculation (JAMB) Unified
Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) have
expressed their grievances over the sudden
slash of the time given to them to finish their
papers.
Some of the affected students writing the
examination, which kicked off on March 9 and
ends on the 21st, voiced out their frustrations to
News Express Correspondent in Ibadan.
Mariam Ahmed Olayinka, who sat for the
Computer Based Test (CBT) exam at the ICT
Centre, The Polytechnic Ibadan, said she was
slated to write her exam from 1:30 p.m., as
stated on her slip, but her batch was called in
at about 5pm – after about four hours delay.
Her words: “We were supposed to start the
exams at 1:30 p.m., but we started 5pm. We
were given three and a half hours to finish up,
but we spent 2 hours for the four papers. At
exactly 7pm, while we were still on the
computer, they asked us to stand up and leave
the hall. We were shouting that we had not
finished, but they went ahead to shut the server
down. This is a sad moment for me and I am
not happy about it.
“With this, I scored 185. I knew if I had done
the last paper, mathematics, I would have
scored more excellently. My parents have been
hurling insults at me since then as if I caused it.
My time was still remaining 1:30 minutes on the
system before they asked me to leave.”
Another candidate who spoke today on the
same development, Olaonipekun Ifeoluwa, JAMB
officials and other invigilators monitoring the
examination decided to shut down the server
before time as it was getting dark. She disclosed
that some of the invigilators complained that
they had children at home to go and cater for.
Ifeoluwa also complained about the slow speed
of the computer systems available for the
examination, which, she said, unnecessarily
slowed down the candidates.
According to Ifeoluwa, “When you click on an
answer for a particular question, it takes time
before it responds to bring another consequent
question. This poor process wastes much of our
time. Most of us were not able to finish up as a
result. This CBT exam should be proscribed
because it has affected us much and we don’t
want a continuation of it.”

Pope Francis drops resignation hints

A Photo of Pope Francis 

Two years to the day after he was elected to
lead the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics, Pope
Francis said today that he expects to have only
a short papacy.
An ABC News report quoted him as telling
Mexican broadcaster Televisa: “I have the feeling
that my Pontificate will be brief, 4 or 5 years; I
do not know, even 2 or 3.
“I feel that the Lord has placed me here for a
short time, and nothing more.”
The report said the 78-year-old pontiff
compared the feeling to “a gambler who
convinces himself he will lose so he won’t be
disappointed. And if he wins, he’s happy.”
When asked if he liked being pope, Francis
reportedly told the interviewer that he doesn’t
mind, but that he also wouldn’t mind some
degree of anonymity. “The only thing I would
like is to go out one day, without being
recognized, and go to a pizzeria for a pizza,” he
was quoted to have said.
Francis, who assumed the office following the
resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, marked the
second anniversary as pope by hearing
confessions at the Vatican.

EFCC: Nemesis will soon catch up with corrupt APC leaders, says Fani-Kayode

Director of Media and Publicity of the Peoples
Democratic Party Presidential Campaign
Organisation (PDPPCO), Chief Femi Fani-Kayode
has assured corrupt leaders of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) that nemesis would
soon catch up with them.
Fani-Kayode spoke against the backdrop of a
forged letter purportedly signed by the Chief of
Staff to the President, Brigadier Jones Arogbofa
and believed to have been circulated by the
opposition APC.
According to him, “We have said it before and
we shall say it again: the entire leadership of
the APC is suffering from paranoia and delusion.
They are hiding under their beds and running
from their own shadows. This is a clear case of
the biblical provisions that say ‘there is no peace
for the wicked’ and that ‘the wicked run even
when no-one is pursuing them.’ These people
have lost their peace and they are running even
when no-one is pursuing them.
“If they are so sure of winning the election and
if their hands are clean then why should they be
having nightmares about the EFCC? The truth is
that they are a party that are struggling with
their shady past and the sordid catalogue of
horrendous sins and crimes that have been
committed by their leaders over the years.
“It does not take a letter from the Chief of Staff
to the President to the EFCC Chairman to
provoke the security agencies to swing into
action against them. Given the grave, serious
and sordid allegations that have been made
against most of them over the last few weeks in
various television documentaries the Nigerian
people themselves are asking questions and
demanding answers.
“As a matter of fact even Nigeria’s partners and
friends in the international

Photo of kayode

community are
asking those same questions and demanding
answers too.
“When the de facto leader of the APC captures
the resources of the whole of south western
Nigeria for himself, his cronies and his loved
ones, when another turns his state into his
personal feudal colony and when another
squanders PTF funds and refuses to show any
remorse or contrition for his actions then you
know that trouble is coming. The truth is that
the chickens are coming home to roost.
“There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that
the APC leaders, including a few of their sitting
and former governors, will eventually face the
music for their horrendous crimes and atrocities
against the Nigerian people. They can feel the
noose tightening around their necks and
consequently they are trembling and squealing
like babies.
“The truth is this: whether they like it or not
nemesis will soon catch up with them and they
will answer for their many crimes.
“All the paranoid and absurd press statements
in the world and all their nebulous and
nonsensical allegations or claims of persecution
and Federal Government conspiracies against
them cannot stop that. God Himself is against
them and sooner than later they shall feel His
wrath and taste of the awesome power of His
word.”

No Nigerian territory will be under Boko Haram control by March 28 —Intelligence chief assures

The Director General of the National Intelligence
Agency (NIA), Ambassador Ayodele Oke, has
declared that “before March 28, no territory of
Nigeria will be under control of Boko Haram.”
He gave the assurance Wednesday in the United
States of America while attending an event at
the Atlantic Council, Washington.
Oke, in an interview with Foreign Policy
magazine, deflected criticisms that the on-going
offensive against Boko Haram launched since the
postponement of the presidential ballot from
Feb. 14 to March 28 indicates the delay was a
political move by incumbent Goodluck Jonathan.
“It is above partisan politics when we are
discussing national security,” he said.
“Nigerians need this democracy more than the
international community does,” he further said.
Oke did take more seriously was Boko Haram’s
recent claim they are now aligned to the Islamic
State, which they announced in a video posted
online on Saturday. That connection, if proven
real, would be especially dangerous because of
the financial support ISIS could provide to Boko
Haram.
Although many have dismissed the group’s
announcement as mere propaganda, Oke said
the Nigerian government is examining it closely.
“Never underrate what they’re planning to do or
who they’re meeting,” he said. “We should deal
with it rather an ignoring it and coming back to
say we made an egregious error.”
According to an online story by Foreign Policy,
“both Oke and Gabriel E. Okoi, Nigeria’s chief of
defence intelligence, took turns jabbing at the
American response to Nigeria’s request for
military assistance, including the cancellation of
an American training programme for the
Nigerian military in late 2014. The U.S. will not
provide military equipment to the Nigerian
military due to past human rights violations, but
Okoi said the training programme the Americans
offered was meant for more modern equipment
than the Nigerian army could provide.
“Our friends disappointed us,” he reportedly
said. “We could not get the arms we needed,
nor could we get the ammunition.”
“We begged…almost on our knees begging
people to help us.”
The report said that Okoi also claimed that even
when it came to providing real-time intelligence,
the United States did not act fast enough.
“We had to shout before you acted,” he was
quoted as having said.
And his response to Americans and other
politicians who claim they’ve done more than
enough?
“Please, check yourselves.”

VIDEO: Getty Images Losing Ground in Mid-Stock Business as CEO Steps Down

With the news of Getty CEO Jonathan Klein stepping down to take on the role of Chairman (as reported here) Klein will have little to celebrate as the storied company itself celebrates 20 years in business this week.
Neither do the photographers whose work is in the Getty Images archives, and who see this announcement - where Klein is Chairman without CEO authority, effectively not much to do - as a last ditch effort to survive, so they are not celebrating either.

(Comments, if any, after the Jump)

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Staff vs. Independent - Why Staff Photographer Jobs are Declining and What to Do About It

There has been much ado in recent years about the overall decline in the number of staff photographer positions at newspapers, yet an anecdotal observation of these same newspapers shows they are publishing the same number of photographs in print, and even more images are being consumed online.  The dire declines in circulation of a newspaper is irrelevant to the number of photos used, it's the same paper (save for the instances where there's also a reduction in page count) just fewer copies are printed. So why are staff photography jobs being slashed practically everywhere you turn?

It's simple math really.

Consider the cost of a staff photographer. Let's break it down using validatable figures:

The mean wage of a news photographer is $43,090 (US Govt DOL, here).  To outfit that photographer with two cameras, lenses, etc, is roughly $10,000 a year (updating, replacing, new, repairs, etc) and about $3k every three years for a new laptop equates to $1k a year for a computer, and a smart phone at $100/mo which allows you to transmit photos, or $1,200 a year.  It also takes approximately 151 square feet of office space per employee (see here for details) and at $23.23 per foot (see here for details), or $3,507.73 per month to provide an employee with a desk, chair, parking, shared cost of a break room,  etc, so that's $42,092.76 a year.  The average person drives about 12,000 miles a year. For a photographer, who is always driving to every assignment, that's low, but let's use that low figure. That equates (at $0.57mile, the IRS  rate) to $6,840 a year. The cost for their employee benefits works out to be 1.25 to 1.4 times the salary (see here), so on the low end, benefits and taxes cost the employer $10,772.50. For futher review, MIT has an interesting outline of costs, here). And a paid employee typically has two weeks vacation, so they work 50 weeks a year.

$  43,090.00 Base salary
$  10,000.00 Gear
$    1,000.00 Laptop and software licensing
$    1,200.00 Cell phone (not incl. office desk line)
$  42,092.76 Office space
$    6,840.00 Vehicle (or reimbursement allowance)
$  10,772.50 Benefits
$114,995.26   TOTAL COST FOR ONE EMPLOYEE PHOTOGRAPHER

As such, the average cost, per week, to have one staff photographer with gear and desk and car is 2,299.91 over 50 weeks.  Every day of a 5 day week, that's $459.98. Even if  you want to debate the cost of the office space, and say it's $0, the daily cost of the staff photographer is still $291.61. It's not $0 though, and accounting and HR don't think it's $0, so don't make an argument that you'll likely lose on this point. (FYI - for those of you in the Washington DC area, where the mean salary for photographers is $66,130, that's benefits of $16,532.50, and with DC as the most expensive place for office space, at $48.96 per square foot, that's $88,715 for your office space. As such, the total cost is $190,417.50, or $761.67 per day 5 days a week.)

It doesn't matter if it's a slow news day.  That is a hard cost for an employee whether they are shooting or not. The rights that photographer grants are work-made-for-hire. They do not own their photographs, the employer does. They pay you every day regardless of whether you're shooting, sick, on vacation, on a comp-day, preparing your entries for a contest, booking your itinerary for your next assignment, or editing your photos at your desk.

There is not a single wire service or newspaper that pays $459 (or more) for an independent photographer. In fact, there are many who pay less than the cost of renting the equipment.

The same rights that the employee grants to the outlet are being demanded - and provided - by the freelancer. This means that the outlet has just as many rights to the visuals produced as they did with their employee.

In addition, these independent photographers are available, in abundance, on an as-needed basis. Why obligate a company to paying for someone 5 days a week when you only need to pay for someone when you need them to actually produce?

What can those in the industry do?

(Continued after the Jump)

What's a Photo Editor to Do?

Photo Editors want the ability to produce excellent results for their newspaper, on a consistent basis. The viewing public, in a landmark survey conducted recently by the NPPA bears out the importance of professionally produced images (more here). The churn in the independent photographer causes the photo editor to spend an inordinate amount of time constantly finding new photographers as others fail and drop out of the profession. The constant learning curve for these new photographers means lost time and dropped balls when it comes to working with them for the company.

A Photo Editor can be certain that a combined review of costs of an employee by both the HR department and the Accounting Department will result in the comparison of the employee versus independent costs of producing visual content.

A Simple analysis shows that if an as-needed photographer costs $250, and an always obligated employee photographer costs $459, why would the employer pay the higher rate? This does not take a rocket scientist to figure out. The Harvard Business Review (here) references that, without severance, it's near impossible to cut costs by 30%. The shift from $459 to $250 is a 54% cost savings, even considering you had an independent photographer working every day. That number can significantly increase if they are only working as-needed, not every day. (For those in DC, that's a 77% cost savings at $250 when the per-day employee cost is $761.)

As difficult as it sounds, one of the administrative obligations of a Photo Editor (or at the very least, the Director of Photography), should be to know the total cost of their department, factor in the value of each producing staff photographer every day, and then pay the independent photographers a rate that is at least equal to the cost to the company of the employee, if not more.

Yes, it's clear that this is not as easy as it sounds. However, if you want a department that will continue to exist, This is necessary. That also means if you value your own job, you should be doing this, or, you may lose your own job. If  you doubt the veracity of this concept, look no further than what happened at The Washington Times (here), and the Chicago Sun Times (here), among many others. Next, ask yourself, at the figures above, would any independent photographer be "living the high life"? They need benefits just like you have. They need an office space just like you have.

In order to preserve the ability to produce great content for your outlet, knowing the cost to your company of an employee allows you to ensure that you are doing the best service to the company.  Cost-cutting is not always what's in the best interests of your company, and when you cut too much, quality suffers. In the current environment, cuts have been so extreme, that quality has suffered.

Your department often sets the rate they will pay. Set one that ensures the quality and consistency of your outlet, not to mention survivability. As a side benefit, the photographic community will be better off as well.

What's a Staff Photographer to Do?

A staff photographer who knows what their job costs the company they are working for should look at an independent photographer working for less than that figure, as similar to a "scab". What's a "scab?" (see here) Simply put, it's someone who is putting the job of the employee (almost always a union employee) at risk during a strike, where the employees are fighting for their jobs and fair pay.  An independent photographer who works for less than half of what it costs your employer for you to do your job is, quite simply, putting your job at risk. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is lying. Countless other photo departments can prove this point. Just ask around. There are many out-of-work former staff photographers  who can validate this point.

Staff photographers should encourage independent photographers to demand a reasonable pay. They should educate their Photo Editors and Directors of Photography about what the independent photographer must do to pay their bills.  They should not facilitate photographers who are cheaper than them in getting work, it's cutting their own throat, with a very slow bleed-out.

What's an Independent Photographer to Do?

First, any independent photographer should know what it costs for them to be in business for a day. An easy calculator to figure this out is provided by the National Press Photographers Association - here - and once you know that figure, you should stick to it and not charge less. In addition, when a photo editor asks you to do a job that requires special equipment (a telephoto lens, satellite phone, remote cameras, and so on) you should be billing a rental charge for the extra equipment. Make sure you are clear that you can bill for mileage associated with the assignment, and then do so. Ask for a production day to be added to your assignments for booking travel, doing research, scouting, and so on. Ensure that you can bill for parking and other expenses - don't eat them - and then bill for them. In the end, the higher your final bill the easier it will be for the client to justify their own staff, and yet you will also be making more money - because you won't be "eating" the costs for things associated with the shoot that the client should be paying for.

In addition, independent photographers should be helping those coming into the profession to understand all that is involved in the costs of being in business. Just because a newly minted photographer fresh out of school has a camera mom and dad bought them as a graduation present doesn't mean they shouldn't be factoring in the cost to replace that equipment when it breaks in a year. Just because they remain under mom and dad's insurance for a few more years doesn't mean they shouldn't be factoring in the costs of health insurance and savings for when they have their own policies.

A rising tide raises all ships.  The field of photography is not made up of people with yachts, vacation homes, and new cars every few years. Helping photographers so they can have a retirement, afford a family, and pay their bills, and avoid living down to the "starving artist" lifestyle, means that everyone wins.

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