Quote:

"Vauxhall has announced it is to slash 900 jobs and cut production at its Ellesmere Port plant. Parent company General Motors said it would reduce the number of shifts at the site from three to two and is aiming to achieve the job losses through voluntary redundancies. GM blamed

LDV vans will be the next one to fall.

MG Rover

Peugot

TVR

Vauxhall

.

Plus numerous others.These are very sad and I think serious times:(

Well have you ever tried to make a french worker redundant?

This country is loosing all the work, because it is so easy to get rid of workers here relative to teh rest of europe. Yes this means creating jobs should in theory be easier, but all of these jobs will end up being short term affairs.

Despite having many factories across europe, one reporter said on the radio this morning that the reason the UK was targeted were our employment laws. Aparently its easier to do this kind of thing here as the rest of europe have stricter employee rights.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again..........

British manufacturing only has itself to blame for the closures of car plants etc. The workforce generally has a stubborn attitude and the managment have an un-willingness to impliment procedures etc. to improve quality etc.

We supply all of the car plants in the UK and it can be seen from simply walking around these places that the sucessful Japanese makers have a culture that is far removed from that found in somewhere like Rover or Vauxhall.

Example 1. We supply a small plastic part to Honda that prevents their robots from trying to weld if the tip is missing from the end of the welding arm. This flags up a fault so the robot will either fit a new cap itself or return to an operator's window to be checked. Generally, the "British" car firms dont buy these because they dont see the potential for a problem and are happy to take the risk, however up to 10 panels/cars could pass through the robot before someone notices the poor welds.

Example 2. We sell machines to weld nuts onto panels, part of these machines is a pin that locates the nut. Honda and Toyota buy 1-2 ceramic coated steel pins each at £80 each because they rarely break and hardly wear. Rover used to buy 1-2 pins a week at £15 each. Maybe this is a cash flow related problem but at the end of the year they're still worse off as they've paid more for spare parts, spent more time on maintenence and had more wled faults.

Example 3. In a Japanese car plant the operators do what they're told to do, they trust their line manager and seem to have a belief that what they're doign is right and that someone has bothered to work this out for them. In a "British" car plant the operators often do things their own way, refuse to change from "the way its been done from years" and assume that they know best all of the time.

Dont get me wrong, British firms can build very effective production lines and make a lot of money - JCB for example (shame they dont pay their engineers that well ) Have new lines installed in purpose build accomodation that turn out hundreds of machines a week. They have an excellent working culture and everyone works for the company and not just themselves.

BMW have also turned round the Oxford Mini plant. Whilst they may prefer to have it in germany, they cant deny the quality of the products that come from the factory.

The employee rights issue is a difficult one. The UK has benefitted from the lower risk to business owners.

Who in their right mind would invest in France? I like the country, but having spent quite a bit of time there, the strikes and protests are just as frequent as they appear, a huge number of people work for the state and nothing is ever changed.

Unfortunately, existing companies find it easier to shed staff in the UK than in Germany and France.....

As quality goods can now be built to a high standard anywhere in the world, Western European wages compared to other places are making things very difficult to sustain here.

-As Skoda owners we've bought VAG cars made on the cheap in a poor country.....

If things continue in the same way, which they will, I'm not sure what's going to happen as eventually there will be very little primary industry to bring money *INTO* the country. People spending money on credit cards will run out soon....

But if they can make cars of the same quality and quantity for less money in another country, then why do they want to keep it is Britian? Regardless of how easy it is or isn't to sake workers.

On a Peugeot perspective it is great for us as we don't look like the bad guys anymore. We have had several people pull out of 206 deals because of the redundancies.

I've said it before' date=' and I'll say it again..........

British manufacturing only has itself to blame for the closures of car plants etc. The workforce generally has a stubborn attitude and the managment have an un-willingness to impliment procedures etc. to improve quality etc.

We supply all of the car plants in the UK and it can be seen from simply walking around these places that the sucessful Japanese makers have a culture that is far removed from that found in somewhere like Rover or Vauxhall.

[u']Example 1.[/u] We supply a small plastic part to Honda that prevents their robots from trying to weld if the tip is missing from the end of the welding arm. This flags up a fault so the robot will either fit a new cap itself or return to an operator's window to be checked. Generally, the "British" car firms dont buy these because they dont see the potential for a problem and are happy to take the risk, however up to 10 panels/cars could pass through the robot before someone notices the poor welds.

Example 2. We sell machines to weld nuts onto panels, part of these machines is a pin that locates the nut. Honda and Toyota buy 1-2 ceramic coated steel pins each at