Today's Cadbury Schweppes announced the closure of its factory in Keynsham and the loss of 700 British jobs as they move production to Poland, of products such as Crunchie and Dairy Milk.
Keynsham is a town of about 15500 residents, of whom 500 work for Cadbury (the other 200 jobs will be lost in Bournville). It has been suggested that Cadbury will sell the site for the development of 'much needed housing' in the town; I wonder how the people of Keynsham will be able to afford a mortgage now!
This news set me thinking about men such as Titus Salt, Joseph Rowntree and George Cadbury, men who created large profitable companies, but who also realised that a business was profitable in areas that couldn't be measured in pure monetary terms. They accepted their social responsibility to the communities in which they were based, and set about funding leisure and welfare facilities, and housing for the benefit of their employees.
I wonder how much consideration the Chairman of Cadbury Schweppes, Sir John Sunderland (or indeed Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the Chairman & CEO of Nestle) gave to his social responsibility before deciding to close the factory in Keynsham.
Perhaps a protest fall in sales would make the company rethink its strategy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Its always sad when British jobs are lost to cheap foriegn labour markets especialy if they are lost from a reletivly small town like Keynsham where quite literaly the local economy will be devastated. However its only what happenned to the mines during the 1980s and that was on a significantly greater scale. Furthermore the British economy is moving to one based on sevices like banking finance consultancy and marketing and so if we want to experiance continued economic growth we must not be over sentimental about losing low value manufacturing jobs.
have u worked out who i am yet ;)?
David Cameron?
While it's true that the British economy is moving towards services rather than manufactured goods, we should still maintain the basic social responsibilty that these companies seem to be forgetting.
Many people that work in these places do so because either the services market is becoming flooded (there are only so many services one person needs; choclate bars have no such limit :) ), or they have no skills in these fields, and can't afford to re-train.
Then I ask you to take a look at the school- or college-leavers. YEs, a growing number go to university, but this doesn't mean they plan to work with their heads. Many of my old school friends went to do apprenticeships in the building site or as a plumber or sparky. If we continue to move more and more towards a fully services-based economy, these people will pass their courses and be out of work, which, come to think of it, will mean that they are then a burden on those who HAVE work.
And of those who go to university, not all of them study things which provide services. One of my flatwork is studying electrical and electronic engineering, with the idea that when he graduates he'll be able to use his handy skills to work in (high-paid) manual labour.
A mix is always best. Yes services are vital to the economy, but so is goods manufacturing, and if we continue to ship out all of our manual labour to cheaper countries, not only will we be erradicating the last remnants of British social responsibility, we'll also be storing up major problems for the next generations, if not our own.
Large multi-national managers and CEOs should look past their balance book and realise that if they continue this way, what they're doing will probably have a detrimental effect on their own company in years to come.
JTPS, what an erudite and intelligent young man you are!
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments, and also feel that our increasing reliance on a service based economy is in grave danger of disaster, as many call centre operators export even these jobs. Who amongst us has not phoned our bank or insurance company or rail enquiries and been connected to someone several thousand miles away, employed solely because they are cheaper than the British-based alternative?
Post a Comment