In message , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
In article ,
charles wrote:
And I'm saying it is in the main nonsense. The industries were already
dead on their feet due to massive under investment

[Snip]

when a company invests in a facility it expects to see a return on the
capital invested.

Of course.

That might mean (as it did with newspapers) that jobs
would be lost. Unions fought to keep all their members employed, so
investment did not take place.

Strange. I thought that investment did take place - or is Wapping a
figment of my imagination?

With the likes of BL and others, any investment in plant had been returned
many many times over. The time to invest in new models and equipment was
when they could sell every car they made - not wait until their sales
declined due to being completely overtaken in design etc by the
competition. A position near impossible to recover from. Exactly as has
happened to SAAB - without any 'interference' from unions.

Certainly there were serious management failures in the BMC days. Stokes
was totally inadequate for the job of sorting out all the factions in
management each protecting their own little fiefdoms. Just look at the
variants of Mini that were produced.
The only profitable bit, Land Rover was totally starved of investment.
--
hugh