"Roger" wrote in message
news snip
I am surprised that anyone buying a business would even include union
representation in their calculations, accountants usually look at the
balance sheet with a 5 year or less payback on the capital outlay plus a 15%
return or better on the capital as operating profit each year. If you are
getting less than that its not a business, its an expensive hobby.

Return on capital is not return on sales, you didn't make that point clear.
How could you possibly think that a union isn't a negative to potential buyers?

Get back to manufacturing basics, read Juran - learn how he took Japan (and
Asia) from an industrial wreck in 1945 into the power house it is today. Its
not new, an American industrial engineer turned Japan around with 1940s
wartime US production methods, but is almost unknown and unread in the USA.

During the 1980's Japan was seen to be a manufacturing powerhouse while American
industry was struggling to keep pace. It was strongly believed that Japanese
manufacturing techniques were uniquely developed for and suited to the Japanese
culture, and thus unsuited for American culture.

The release of the whitepaper showed that the Japanese techniques were, in fact,
taught to Japanese manufacturers by an W. Edwards Deming, whose beliefs had been
largely ignored by American management. Deming had a LOT more to do with the
reformation of Japan's manufacturing and their production philosophy!