Dyson job losses

[Otispunkmeyer]

cardigankid said:

For goodness sake you can see what happened to heavy industry in UK. I live in Glasgow where it is a great deal more obvious than many others while you are simply using charts to argue black is white.

As for high tech research exemplified by Dyson, I can only repeat. Vacuum cleaners and hand driers. Square root of diddly squat.

I source manufactured products from China and guess what it’s a lot cheaper than the UK.

Funnily enough, if you go to Germany, they can still build ships, not to mention cars, high value consumer goods, building products, you name it, high wage economy or not. And these industries are not dangerous or unhealthy to work in. What’s more, many of them are still family controlled. Therefore they build up financial and industrial muscle which for all the talent hard work and creativity in the UK we do not. Because the UK model is build up and sell out. Therefore our best home grown industries are on a tiny scale.

Anyway, I am not going to convince you, you are for sure not going to convince me, and it’s time to move on.

I like how Germany operates. We have a lot of high tech kit from companies in Germany, and when you look, most are small, privately run, often bearing the family name....and it works. They make great products, they make healthy profits and they pay their staff very very well. They supply us, they even supply big German OEMs as well, with an excellent level of service.

Why can’t we do that? I’ve been part of a few startups in the uk aiming for similar...all were complete fuster clucks, hanging by a thread from day one.

[richie99]

cardigankid said:

There is another matter to factor into the Dyson/Brexit debate. There is the long standing ‘mystery’ about UK productivity. This is, in brief, why UK productivity is so low when we work longer hours than Germany for example. That is only a mystery if you assume all other factors are the same ( which is why the charts above are so misleading ) and ignore the full story. The key factor is investment. In the UK investment is low because the constant focus is sucking money out of the company for various purposes or indeed selling up altogether which just means that the company has to show a return on investment or actually pay the cost of its acquisition. There are various reasons for this, one is the ‘aristocratic’ legacy where what is most admired is power and money without responsibility. Another is the penal UK tax system which rips off every one of us, least of all ironically the super rich. In that kind of tax environment you take what you can before someone takes it away from you.

Dyson does appear to own most or all of the company, which is fine, but of course it is now going to leave the UK due in part to EU / UK bureaucracy, which follows from the above. He clearl has little faith in the UKs ability to sort itself out post Brexit so should maybe have kept his mouth shut during the referendum.

Sorry to rain on your parade with some more facts. Productivity is measured as output per hour. Working longer does not make any difference and probably makes it worse if you are slacking off for part of your longer working week.

We could have a long and separate debate about the reasons for lack of investment and its impact on productivity. One reason is almost certainly that it is impossible to get rid of a French or German employee once you have taken them on so you have to be pretty sure you need them before you do so. Getting more out of your existing workforce becomes very important which is good for productivity but not so great for job creation. As the numbers show.

[b0rk]

cardigankid said:

Funnily enough, if you go to Germany, they can still build ships, not to mention cars, high value consumer goods, building products, you name it, high wage economy or not. And these industries are not dangerous or unhealthy to work in. What’s more, many of them are still family controlled. Therefore they build up financial and industrial muscle which for all the talent hard work and creativity in the UK we do not. Because the UK model is build up and sell out. Therefore our best home grown industries are on a tiny scale.

cardigankid said:

There is the long standing ‘mystery’ about UK productivity. This is, in brief, why UK productivity is so low when we work longer hours than Germany for example. That is only a mystery if you assume all other factors are the same ( which is why the charts above are so misleading ) and ignore the full story. The key factor is investment. In the UK investment is low because the constant focus is sucking money out of the company for various purposes or indeed selling up altogether which just means that the company has to show a return on investment or actually pay the cost of its acquisition.

The interesting thing is if you look closely these two items, lack of production and poor productivity are linked. The German industrial base is driven the "Mittelstand" of small typically family owned manufacturers that are absolute experts in what they do. They think and act not for next quarter profits or even next years but for the next decade or four, strong investments into efficiency coupled with staff possessing deep domain knowledge of product result in producers able to compete with cheaper far-eastern suppliers for the most. Go into a UK based manufacturer and for the most what you'll find are staff that are mostly competent but couldn't be considered expert, generalism is preferred over specialism. This lack of expertise results increased time vs expert knowledge and with the "flexible" labour market decisions around production being driven by inefficient thinking in terms oh let's just hire a few more staff to increase output not lets invest is in XYZ tool/process to generate the production increase with no additional staff.

Manufacturing wise there isn't really much that can be done to solve this now as tier 1's have mostly gone leaving the smaller producers that used to supply them with very limited domestic options in terms of customers and a high cost base for export sales. Whilst the shift to light manufacturing and services has kept the economy functioning it doesn't represent a viable long term strategy without tackling the reason's why heavy became uneconomic. If services are to be the future then competitiveness and productivity need to addressed or the "low cost" markets will take these jobs as well as their economies mature.

[Vaud]

richie99 said:

We could have a long and separate debate about the reasons for lack of investment and its impact on productivity. One reason is almost certainly that it is impossible to get rid of a French or German employee once you have taken them on so you have to be pretty sure you need them before you do so. Getting more out of your existing workforce becomes very important which is good for productivity but not so great for job creation. As the numbers show.

That, and the appalling levels of sexism, elitism and "labelling" of employees (in France in particular)...

[cardigankid]

richie99 said:

Sorry to rain on your parade with some more facts. Productivity is measured as output per hour. Working longer does not make any difference and probably makes it worse if you are slacking off for part of your longer working week.

We could have a long and separate debate about the reasons for lack of investment and its impact on productivity. One reason is almost certainly that it is impossible to get rid of a French or German employee once you have taken them on so you have to be pretty sure you need them before you do so. Getting more out of your existing workforce becomes very important which is good for productivity but not so great for job creation. As the numbers show.

One other reason is that in the crucial post war period Germany consistently invested more in industry and infrastructure, while Britain spent its share of Marshall Aid (the largest given to any one country) maintaining an large scale military establishment in order to stay at the ‘Top Table’. Much good that did.

[skwdenyer]

cardigankid said:

richie99 said:

Sorry to rain on your parade with some more facts. Productivity is measured as output per hour. Working longer does not make any difference and probably makes it worse if you are slacking off for part of your longer working week.

We could have a long and separate debate about the reasons for lack of investment and its impact on productivity. One reason is almost certainly that it is impossible to get rid of a French or German employee once you have taken them on so you have to be pretty sure you need them before you do so. Getting more out of your existing workforce becomes very important which is good for productivity but not so great for job creation. As the numbers show.

One other reason is that in the crucial post war period Germany consistently invested more in industry and infrastructure, while Britain spent its share of Marshall Aid (the largest given to any one country) maintaining an large scale military establishment in order to stay at the ‘Top Table’. Much good that did.

Thank you for pointing-up the Marshall Aid issue, something I'd never bothered to read about properly. I now have. What a wasted opportunity!

[Tryke3]

skwdenyer said:

Thank you for pointing-up the Marshall Aid issue, something I'd never bothered to read about properly. I now have. What a wasted opportunity!

Seriously?

[Vaud]

Tryke3 said:

skwdenyer said:

Thank you for pointing-up the Marshall Aid issue, something I'd never bothered to read about properly. I now have. What a wasted opportunity!

Seriously?

I'm inclined to partly agree. Japan, forbidden from having a standing army post WW2 directed that spend into infrastructure and industry. They relied on the US for defence. Look at the strength of their internal infrastructure and industrial manufacturing base by the 70's.

In 1947 UK defence spending was 16 percent of GDP, but declined to 6 percent of GDP by 1950.
The Korean War, and defence spending increased to 11.2 percent GDP in 1952.
It declined through the rest of the 1950s to 7 percent GDP by 1959.
It is now ~2%.

If we had reduced defence spending to even 8% and ploughed 8% back into new technologies, we would have had a very different manufacturing base by 1970....