Tuesday 24 February 2009

Why do factories exist?

The recent reports claiming that the Astra factory at Ellesmere Port is on the brink of closure raises a large and worrying question. The unions are saying that without Government funding, the plant will close, putting thousands of workers out of work. They cite this as good enough reason to put money in.

Yet surely, a car plant exists to make cars in response to market demand. If there's no demand, why continue?

Or perhaps it is right to create jobs. Unemployment is not pleasant and once you add the cost of benefits and re-trainnig, perhaps keeping the plant open actually represents value for money. If that was the case, all public sector organisations could be ordered by buy the cars. But what would the impact of that be on other manufacturers?

To me, the world needs to make a very simple decision. Nationalise everything and forget about market demand or individual choice. In fact we could also have national pay scales that dictate what everybodfy earns. OR stop interfering and let supply and demand balance themselves naturally. A little or each simply won't work . . .

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Just like the meaningless term that is 'social enterprise'. Either it's a business or a charity but make a decision people!

Robert Ashton said...

Actually, the term 'social enterprise' is far from meaningless. It's the way that most business will be done in the future . . .

Anonymous said...

These giants need to take responsibility & accept that a decline in demand means a decline in production.

Do they not have the brains to have a strategy in place for when times get hard and production needs cutting?

Why do my taxes suddenly need to go on bailing out these people?

Vauxhall is American owned & Jaguar Indian - why don't the owners pump their own money in?

All that will happen is that our government will pump billions in, there will still be less demand & the money will soon disappear OR it'll get used for something other than saving the jobs. I wonder how traceable our money becomes once these companies take it form us? Same goes for the banks....is any of this money traceable once they have it? it should be, it's our money!


My business has declined by 20% because of the current climate but nobodies throwing money at me. Plus seeing as my products are better than an Astra I deserve the money!

Check them out here; www.waterfrontmanufacturing.co.uk