Could also be that the like of Honda have a single union on site and the union is prepared to make concessions in Sunderland that it fights everywhere else. The site has fully flexible labour that can have their shifts altered at short notice - i.e. matching demand and supply!! It works in Sunderland because the AEU know not to rock the boat.

Ask Unite about flexible labour!! they will fight you all way until you threaten to close the site and then they cave in. Shame they can't take a more reasonable view - this intransigence has cost thousands of their members their jobs as senior management don't need the grief and transfer production to other sites.

Andy do you honestly think Unite care about their members? Unite is a very political union that wants to influence government. Workers are mere pawns in their hunger for publicity. Their membership numbers have been falling for years - has that affected the likes of Whelan, McCluskey, Sibbald etc? They are still drawing their fat salaries - Simpson was on £186k!! and driving their Beamers. Still spouting their Socialist clap trap!! hypocrites if ever there were any.

I bet they knew that Honda don't have a presence in Sunderland though

You still haven't got it have you?

The problems start and stop with the management, the same workers have proved they can work well and produce good quality cars, on time, on budget and they just work. The union doesn't rock the boat because they have no need to, management see the unions as a tool for good not something to antagonise, likewise when the workers raise issues they are listened to, treated with respect and agreements are made.

Would you ever see UK management work like Honda did last year, paid downtime with agreements to work if off when the parts supply returns to normal?

BTW, Honda are in Swindon, Nissan in Sunderland.

That's what flexible labour is all about!! matching supply and demand we have that in our factory in Bradford the guys paid the same each month the work longer hours Aug to Dec shorter hours April to July - seasonal demand cycle. We also allow them to carry days owed to the company into the following year. We don't have a union but we got 90% approval on introduction and has been running happily for over two years. We tried to introduce this arrangement into other sites but we got short shrift from Unite. Guess what happened - the company simply closed the sites which resulted in 500+ people losing their jobs.

To say it is always the management's fault shows you have little/no dealings with the likes of Unite.

Here is another example you can google. BGP a large printing firm losing money, they decided they need to reduce labour costs by 10-20% so they proposed a sliding scale 20% for Management down to 10% for those on 18k+ and none for those below. Unite had a very small representation 13% but thought it had some negotiating status. BGP said Unite had no rights and just went straight to staff and got the plan agreed - it was either agree or close. Unite - being excluded took umbridge and threatened to legally challenge there own members vote!!

So you have to question does the union work for its members or is it only interested in itself?

Or, you could question anyone two-dimensional enough to think you can boil a complex institution of myriad conflicting viewpoints, ideologies, motivations etc. to a precipitate whose absolute nature can be unambiguously determined with a simple "yes" or "no" answer.

You ask Honda to take slightly lower profits so it isnt so inflexible towards it works and see what type of reasonable answer you get.

Increased cost would be great if Honda operated in isolation - they don't though do they? Reduced profitability would mean reduced R&D would ultimately lead to reduced competitive advantage etc.

In the real world they do.

Also in the real world the term "profits" means something different. It means R&D spending in the real world.

If our unions and our labour force are so inflexible, why did Nissan, Toyota and Honda set up here instead of other EU countries and why have BMW and Land Rover Jaguar announced extending the range of British-built models?