Perhaps they fancied a drink with GM strikers? (they are back now tho)
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3760234.stm
Seems there is a lot of unrest in the Major European car plants, too many car plants spread around Western Europe methinks rationalisation on the horizon, maybe major moves eastwards
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I know VW made a load of people redundant recently as well on the Golf lines in Germany.
Appears as though the Golf isn't selling well across Europe. Only we British seem to be snapping the new Mk5 Golf up.
Obviously we are mug enough to pay over the top prices, but the rest of Europe isn't.
Sounds like price cuts are in order to keeps the sales going?>>
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Good luck to them. Hope they achieve their aim.
--
L\'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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Well, they are already making a LOT of VWs in Uitenhage down near Port Elizabeth - a hell of a lot of them for export to Europe and mainland China - so maybe one of these fine days they'll shift even more production to that part of the world...
... "and comparatively high labour costs"?
Yes, I can see the unionised Germany heading the same way as the Unionised Britain of the 70s... Sorry for you, there are people prepared to work for less, just that they live on the other side of the world.
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I am convinced that in ten year's time there will be comparitively little car production in Western Europe. It just doesn't make sense to manufacture in a highly regulated, unionised and waged economy when you can employ labour at a fraction of the cost elsewhere.
Look at Dyson - keeping the R & D in UK but production now moved to the Far East (for the vacuums anyway, I think the washing machines are still made here)
I hope I'm wrong.
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Look at Dyson - keeping the R & D in UK but production now moved to the Far East (for the vacuums anyway, I think the washing machines are still made here) I hope I'm wrong.
Dyson was making a very healthy profit in the UK (the guy personally made over £700m from his company). The reason for the move to the Far East was so that he could make even MORE profit. How much profit is enough?
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Yes, I can see the unionised Germany heading the same way as the Unionised Britain of the 70s... Sorry for you, there are people prepared to work for less, just that they live on the other side of the world.
I don't understand all this talk about 'unionised' - unions haven't got much to do with it. Neither has China in this particular case. I can only describe a lot of what appears in the UK press (and no doubt in other Western countries) as 'propaganda'.
I have been to China, specifically to look at the automotive component supply sector. It is bedevilled by problems. In some cases there are terrible infrastructural problems (intermittant supply of water and electricity, for example). Chinese companies will often not honour contracts (if their costs unexpectedly rise they simply tear up the contract!). The extent of pollution in the industrialised corridor stretching out from Shanghai has to be seen to be believed. There is little freedom and staff are often hired for a month and then not paid.
Much of the profit being generated in China is actually repatriated to companies in the West.
My prediction is that the Chinese economy will go 'pop' in the not too distant future (many of the Chinese managers we spoke to are expecting it to) and then there could be large-scale civil disturbance.
For all but the middle and upper classes (still a tiny percentage of the population) industrialised China is a pretty miserable place to live.
I say thank God for the EU imposing all of those environmental standards on us and thank God for unions who've helped most of us enjoy a standard of living that the average Chinese person can only dream about.
The 'globalised economy' only works because transnational companies are able to exploit the big differences in living standards between different parts of the world. They manufacture at developing world cost and sell and first-world prices - its not difficult to make a profit when you adopt that approach (i.e the approach Dyson has taken). The snag comes when your customers in the first world can no longer afford to buy you products or your costs turn out to be higher than you expected and the quality of the product is poor (e.g. the Rover 'Indicar' debacle).
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