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Industrial investment in 1979 wouldn't have worked.

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    Industrial investment in 1979 wouldn't have worked.

    That is my humble opinion on the matter; it would have been good money after bad in part due to the culture of the British worker circa 1979. At this time and up until recently there was the scourge of ‘restrictive practices’ in most large unionised industries and even in some small to medium ones, as we shall see.

    Restrictive practices are where tasks in a given business are clearly delineated along trade and job boundaries to what seems now days to be anal infinities. Example:

    My father was an electrician in a breezeblock factory responsible for the electrical maintenance of amongst other thing the production lines. If a line went down and he needed to remove the front from a relay panel or the such like he had to find a fitter as he wasn’t allowed to remove the few bolts and screws as this task was not in his defined tasks. So the line could be down for hours until he could find one or they could be bothered to turn up. Fed up with this he went self-employed eventually.

    Another example, whilst self-employed my father got a contract to install several new American electrical furnaces into a few medium and small engineering companies, these not only were more stable and produced a higher quality product than the coal fired ones but also required 3 fewer men to operate as they no longer needed stokers. The contract was cancelled as the unions wouldn’t wear it, you can guess what happened to most of these companies.

    Even into the early nineties it was still prevalent, my brother was a junior manager at the copper works in Leeds and they were losing trade to eastern European manufacturing at an alarming rate, they invested in some new presses but the labour cost was still too high, due again in part to restrictive practices. A machine fitter was only there to fix and maintain machines and other people were there for the more menial tasks and operating the presses. They tried to reduce the labour force for efficiency reasons by getting rid of the menial workers and the fitters becoming more deployable to different tasks. There was an outcry and threats of strikes etc, and it must be pointed out with the advancements in machine reliability there were sometimes weeks where a fitter would actually perform no work at, just drink tea and read the paper all week. There was one heated meeting where my brother held up two copper fittings and said to them ‘ this in my left hand costs a plumber 50p and this in my right hand costs 75p, which would you buy?’ So he managed to drive through the required changes and the factory is still going under a different guise.

    It wasn’t until the likes of Nissan and Toyota turned up that British industry started getting the message, back in 1979 any money invested would have been used to prop up these practices and most definitely not in labour saving machinery etc.

    These Thatcher hating socialists are just angry they missed out on the chance to be a Napoleon or Squealer whilst keeping the workingman down as a Boxer.
    But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition. Pliny the younger

    #2
    I've worked in several client cos with much the same division of tasks between DBA, OS support and so on. You have the same petty empire building, obstruction and inefficiency. It's management squabbling rather than union politics but the effect is much the same.

    It seems to be the case that a proportion of people are a bit ******* useless and need to be kept busy and out of the way of those who aren't. The real measure of any economic system should be how well it can prevent the hopeless from crippling everything.
    While you're waiting, read the free novel we sent you. It's a Spanish story about a guy named 'Manual.'

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      #3
      Personally I think the whole stupid British class culture is to blame.
      All this demarcation of work you describe is merely to create a hierarchy in order to feel superior to someone else.
      And British management was just as much to blame - working conditions in British factories were abysmal: dirty, unsafe (hence the overeraction with 'elf and safty nowadays), with outdated equipment.
      The story is told of British Leyland staff visiting a VW factory in Wolfsburg and being amazed at the pristine conditions and modern equipment.
      So its no wonder the workers revolted.
      Basically I'm coming to the conclusion that this is a very silly country: the need to be one better than the Joneses with petty status symbols, the lack of respect for brains and the elevation of the mediocre, the superficialness of it all.
      We are sowing what we reap.
      Hard Brexit now!
      #prayfornodeal

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by doodab View Post
        I've worked in several client cos with much the same division of tasks between DBA, OS support and so on. You have the same petty empire building, obstruction and inefficiency. It's management squabbling rather than union politics but the effect is much the same.

        It seems to be the case that a proportion of people are a bit ******* useless and need to be kept busy and out of the way of those who aren't. The real measure of any economic system should be how well it can prevent the hopeless from crippling everything.
        Think you just said what I did with different words.
        Problem is when a culture makes no distinction between the hopeless and useful.
        That happened in the 60s when everyone was deemed equal.
        And recently we have the BS of "Emotional IQ", "Communication Skills" etc etc to justify thickos getting a job.
        Last edited by sasguru; 15 April 2013, 12:29.
        Hard Brexit now!
        #prayfornodeal

        Comment


          #5
          I cannot disagree with the examples you have for I heard of similar, but the fact is that the manufacturing company I worked for from 1977 to 1978 was doing very well at the time and grew from 20 million turnover a year then to over 500 million by 1998.

          Yes there were unions but there was a culture of share ownership among the employees and that probably made a big difference.

          That company finally got taken over about 10 years ago by a huge multinational. I suspect that implementing SAP caused that
          Behold the warranty -- the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away.

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            #6
            Everything was fine......until Thatcher came along.

            Discuss.

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              #7
              and you can fook off back into your shell as well prawny

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by sasguru View Post
                And recently we have the BS of "Emotional IQ", "Communication Skills" etc etc to justify thickos getting a job.
                It's a circular situation. In a workplace full of useless people not upsetting them by calling them useless is actually considered a skill
                While you're waiting, read the free novel we sent you. It's a Spanish story about a guy named 'Manual.'

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by sasguru View Post
                  Personally I think the whole stupid British class culture is to blame.
                  Yep.

                  Originally posted by sasguru View Post
                  The story is told of British Leyland staff visiting a VW factory in Wolfsburg and being amazed at the pristine conditions and modern equipment.
                  I had a tour around a VW factory and it was spotless.

                  Originally posted by sasguru View Post
                  Basically I'm coming to the conclusion that this is a very silly country: the need to be one better than the Joneses with petty status symbols, the lack of respect for brains and the elevation of the mediocre, the superficialness of it all.
                  Yep. One of the first things I realised after moving to Europe was that I could escape the pigeon holing (class, material possessions etc) that is so prevalent British society.
                  Behold the warranty -- the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by sasguru View Post
                    Basically I'm coming to the conclusion that this is a very silly country: .
                    Well Feck off then you Oily little pleb
                    Let us not forget EU open doors immigration benefits IT contractors more than anyone

                    Comment

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