We’re still at it ain’t we ?
Were still blaming unions for the lack of profitability and incentives in the UK economy.
Yet Germany (which does have its own problems based upon inflexibility and developing a completely backward nation ie its other half) chose to work with unions, it empowered them, it broke down divides between management and unions, it respeceted experience, it respected industry, it did not poo-poo engineering and vocational training like the upper class academian twits of the elitist British establishment of the 50’s 60’s and 70’s.
Take a look at the UK chemical industry, it worked on the single union model, it had worker representation on boards, it brought the workers along with the new ideas and it became one of our biggest profit earners, especially pharmaceuticals which is very heavily dependant upon consumer confidence, training and investment.
Then look at the rest of British industry, mules led by donkeys is perhaps the best description.
I give it to you again, poor leadership always leads to poor followers, it encourages and teaches the followers bad habits.
Its a struggle to lead effectively, it takes talent and effort, but its what the big boys in the boardroom take the big bucks for, and they did not deliver, and when confidence goes the investment finds somewhere else to go too.
Our most succesful industries have always been those that innovate, invest, train, and include - none of these things can be applied to British management, not then, and hardly even nowadays.
Here is a simple observation on the status of engineers in this country and is indicative of those who contstruct and design things even at a very senior level.
In Germany, if you wish to call yourself an engineer, you are expected to have degree qualifications, preferably to Doctorate and Charter level, but certainly at diploma level and you are expected to have the releveant work experience.
The Germans attatch a certain status to engineers, the senior ones will also be called Herr Doktor.
In the UK there is no nationally agreed standard that we call an engineer, so that we might call the geezer on an oily lathe an ‘engineer’, or a car mechanic an ‘engineer’ when in fact they took no post school education or training whatsoever.
In UK hospitals, to apply for an engineers post you need only have completed your apprenticeship or equivalent and have gained NVQ level 3 or C&G level 3 or ONC.
We have this habit of looking down upon those who do things, but yet hold high regard for the aristos who do sod all, which pretty much sums up the attitude of British leadership over the last 500 oor more years, whith a brief interlude for the industrial revolution.
The UKs performance was exarcerbated by the unions, but it was created and continued to be fed by our complacent leaders and company bosses, its this that is our problem, but its soooooo easy to blame the workers.
That’s cause those who accuse workers are too lazy to address the shite leadership we have endured, they believe the nasty shitey reactionary newspapers instead of actually getting out of their lazy intellectual attitudes and looking and analysing things for themselves.
It’s so easy to read ther Torygraph, or the Times and accept these as information sources unquestioningly, its fucking lazy too, you have more information availabe to you than you have ever had before, and it is so much easier to obtain, use your computor for fucks sake, question the accepted line, look at UK investment performance, look at world trade and recessions, look at oil price rises, analyse why Germany and Japan did so well, see where they are going wrong now, and ask why we are not exploiting their weakness - one things for sure, we cannot blame them for lost trade, nor can we blame the unions, yet our performance is still shite, then look at our R&D investment, look at our education funding, look at our training standards, look at the lack of true competition amongst our young in education.
Use your brain, don’t just trot out the same old shite about ‘the unions’ give us numbers and reasoned analysis, what you’ll find is that the Tory electorate despise you, they hate or are suspicious of innovation and skill, they are not really comfortable with the super competant and want us just to be average, then look at New Labour - there just isn’t all that much differance between them.
We’ve become a nation of averages, slowly sinking into the sea we once ruled.
