England Running Out of Water?

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 3/21/2019 at 9:22 PM, Iain09 said:

I really like the UBI point, I think that it is very sensible. I think workers at Jag/Landrover and Wedgewood ceramics would agree too. Maybe limit it to technology based careers, Internet, computers, robotics, the kind of job skills which we are behind with compared to other developed nations.

Or digging new resevoirs.......

A bit off the point of the original post, yet I feel obliged to respond to your commentary regarding the "retraining" of Midlands auto workers. From what I gather the auto labor unions in those Midlands plants were set up with a dizzying number of skill classes, and each one had its own union.  So you had a situation where a plant with 2,500 workers could be held up with a strike of ten men in a job class and own union; to re-start the plant, management would have to cave in to whatever demands were being made, which then set the bar for the next union and their strike.  With that kind of labor attitude, those companies just went bust. 

You cannot seriously contemplate the idea that you can re-train people with that sort of mindset to work in a "technology based career" such as computers (presumably software) and robotics (presumably both software and hardware). Those jobs require total cross-collaboration with others, and that is not a mindset developed in the British auto plants.  That is doomed to failure. 

The British auto workers, and I would expand that to the British industrial workers, made themselves unemployable by both the industrial sector and all other sectors, by their cruddy attitudes.  I appreciate that is harsh;  I think it is true. Nobody is going to hire anyone with the attitude of the British auto worker of those dismal years, not today, not ever, those guys are now permanently unemployable anywhere. Does that condemn British society?  Yes, probably.  Sorry, but it is what it is. You cannot have a modern production society with the workforce constantly on strike and holding the plant managers to ransom.  Those plants close. Now before you jump on me, reflect that my bride is British, her dad was a Rear Admiral of the Fleet,  OK that is the management crust of the British class system, but hey, not as if I have not seen how Britain goes together.  It is what it is.

[Iain09 + 9]

On 3/27/2019 at 1:49 AM, Jan van Eck said:

A bit off the point of the original post, yet I feel obliged to respond to your commentary regarding the "retraining" of Midlands auto workers. From what I gather the auto labor unions in those Midlands plants were set up with a dizzying number of skill classes, and each one had its own union.  So you had a situation where a plant with 2,500 workers could be held up with a strike of ten men in a job class and own union; to re-start the plant, management would have to cave in to whatever demands were being made, which then set the bar for the next union and their strike.  With that kind of labor attitude, those companies just went bust. 

You cannot seriously contemplate the idea that you can re-train people with that sort of mindset to work in a "technology based career" such as computers (presumably software) and robotics (presumably both software and hardware). Those jobs require total cross-collaboration with others, and that is not a mindset developed in the British auto plants.  That is doomed to failure. 

The British auto workers, and I would expand that to the British industrial workers, made themselves unemployable by both the industrial sector and all other sectors, by their cruddy attitudes.  I appreciate that is harsh;  I think it is true. Nobody is going to hire anyone with the attitude of the British auto worker of those dismal years, not today, not ever, those guys are now permanently unemployable anywhere. Does that condemn British society?  Yes, probably.  Sorry, but it is what it is. You cannot have a modern production society with the workforce constantly on strike and holding the plant managers to ransom.  Those plants close. Now before you jump on me, reflect that my bride is British, her dad was a Rear Admiral of the Fleet,  OK that is the management crust of the British class system, but hey, not as if I have not seen how Britain goes together.  It is what it is.

John, I like reading your posts, they are informative and I am impressed with your knowledge in general, however I do not agree with all this. which time period are you reffering to for multi super skilled auto workers in the midlands ?

Bearing in mind I live in the midlands and have many friends who work in the sector and supporting business (engineering).

This industry now does not have the vast number of skilled workers than they did 30 years ago, gone are the days where we had 10 huge manufacturing plants from various vehicle producers, most of them died in the late 90's also they do not beat panels anymore and a lot of the components are manufactured in other places and only so called just in time components come from local sources.

Then add the automated production lines which cut the need for skilled workers using ROBOTICS. Only Aston Martin build there cars by hand now in our area. Jaguar Landrover use multiple employment agencys to bring workers in to do a specific job on the line in times of need, in and out when demand ramps and falls, there is no union power for agency workers or zero hour contracts.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

39 minutes ago, Iain09 said:

Jan, I like reading your posts, they are informative and I am impressed with your knowledge in general, however I do not agree with all this. which time period are you referring to for multi super skilled auto workers in the midlands ?

 

1970's and 1980's, which is where the deep-seated antipathy of labour to management, and vice-versa, got set in cement, and caused management to start re-thinking manufacturing inside the Midlands.  Once integrated manufacturers such as Ford got a taste of just how entrenched these attitudes were, the idea of giving up and moving out started becoming a realistic option.  If you want to wreck your employer, all you have to do is hate your job.  Everything else will flow naturally from that start point. 

43 minutes ago, Iain09 said:

This industry now does not have the vast number of skilled workers than they did 30 years ago, gone are the days where we had 10 huge manufacturing plants

And the reason is the labor force.  Management effectively busted the unions by going to temp-hire agencies, as you describe. And doing that is quite expensive, several dollars an hour more for each worker, but management "ate" that cost in order to avoid being sabotaged by union strikes, which so crippled the industry. 

The harsh truth is that, if your workforce is goaded into using those tactics, then your plant will collapse.  The auto business has thin enough margins as it is.  I recall at one point Ford calculated that all its profits on sedans was in the financing.  The production was held back by low Japanese price points, so they could not raise pricing to cover ever-increasing health care costs.And their contracts did not allow for lowering wages or other responses.  Basically, the car was like the toaster your local bank gave you to come in and make a loan; the car was a loss-leader to entice the buyer to come into the Ford family and start doing his transactions with Ford.  Well, you can only go so far with that model and survive, considering the staggering investment in capital costs to set up and run those plants.

The British problem was that the mass-market manufacturers, even when combined into, what did they call it finally, Leyland?, could not sustain a model where their costings got to the point that there was a loss on each unit going out the door, when full costing was made.  You cannot run a plant on marginal costing, that only works for a few weeks and then the fixed-cost bills come in and have to be settled. Meanwhile Toyota and Honda and Mitsubishi are nipping at your heels with new models and tight construction, so where does that leave the Leyland guys?  You cannot make any money on the car with the Japanese price-level constraints, you have no money-making possibilities in financing as you do not have a financing arm the way GMAC did, and you have this Sword of Damocles hanging over your plant of some internal union striking and busting the entire razor-thin operation into toothpicks.  With that dynamic, don't be surprised that the place goes bust. 

One final note:  Britain today still operates on the class warfare of centuries past.  You don't get that in the USA.  Reflect that the President of Ford at one point was this son of an Italian immigrant laborer who worked in the steel mills of Eastern Pennsylvania.  His name was Lee Iaccoca, developer of the Ford Mustang and a true auto genius (and also a manager genius).  Lee did not have "Blue Blood," which irked his boss, one of the Fords, I forget which was was Chairman of Ford at that time, so Ford fired him.  Lee moved over to Chrysler and revamped the product line and the manufacturing and basically rebuilt Chrysler all by himself, a spectacular achievement.  In Britain, that simply does not happen. So the smart guys who have worked down on the line never make it to management, and the field sales guys never make it to the marketing department, and the entire enterprise only runs because it has run in the past (something I call the "rust principle").  Therein lies the fundamental problem of Britain: it is this society that lives looking in the rear view mirror.  And you see that today with Brexit, where you have these Eton and Oxford guys thinking they still run the Empire and own India and by God those wops will kneel!  Except, of course, they no longer do that. 

[John Foote + 1,135]

On 3/25/2019 at 9:58 PM, ronwagn said:

Utter nonsense. Climate has always changed. Humanity has thrived more and more each decade. 

I happen to believe we will adapt, but geological time climate change is pretty harsh. Humans have been around a very short period of time. How long has it been since man managed fire, and using sticks and stones. Almost no time in the context of the planet. We are changing the planet. The planet will do fine, whether we do or not.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

36 minutes ago, John Foote said:

I happen to believe we will adapt, but geological time climate change is pretty harsh. Humans have been around a very short period of time. How long has it been since man managed fire, and using sticks and stones. Almost no time in the context of the planet. We are changing the planet. The planet will do fine, whether we do or not.

The climate has always changed and man has little to do with it. The environment as a whole is another story. We are making massive changes to other organisms and whole ecosystems through chemical pollution, radiation, trash, air pollution, coal, etc. I am a proponent of natural gas which I believe is the cleanest, most affordable, most abundant choice for baseload energy. Its most positive initial effect can be in replacing coal, some diesel, and some gasoline. It can fuel any modified internal combustion engine.