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BoldonLad

Not part of the Elite
Location
South Tyneside
Your attitude explains a lot about how the UK manufacturing sector has sunk as low as it has compared to the rest of the world, and it's not just down to poor management................

Quite:

UK Bicycle industry ...
UK Motor Cycle industry .......
UK Car industry ........
UK Ship Building Industry .......
UK Railway Locomotive and Rolling Stock industry ........
the list goes on

near where I live, there were factories making Heavy Duty Insulators for the Electric Transmission Industry, Turbines for electricity generation, numerous ship building/ship repair yards, they employed tens of thousands of people... all gone now, many of the sites are now covered in housing

We were leaders in all of these fields in the fairly recent past.....
 

SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
So the idea is too just stay at the bottom throughout life in your opinion.

What you consider the bottom or top depends whether you think having the word "manager" in your job title confers some superior status or not. For me, it doesn't, as the junior managers aren't true managers anyway. They have very little autonomy or discretion to "manage" anything, they just get their instructions from the seniors and are expected to implement them in a standardised way.

If everyone had that attitude where would the UK be, mind you next year who knows anyway.

I'm available to my employer for the hours they are paying me for, and that's the end of it. I'll answer a phone call from a colleague in my time, because I might have info that could help them out, but I'm buggered if I'm going to do any work-related admin outside the hours I get paid. There's a clear demarcation in my life - when I'm being paid, then work gets my attention. After my finish time, it can wait until the next day.

Managers are entitled to decide and negotiate the standard of work they expect their workforce to deliver and it becomes a problem for the company when people regard that as harassment.

It could be due to poor management, but it is just as likely due to the attitude of the workforce.

Work standards are fine by me as I don't cut corners or bodge anything. Managers demanding arbitary quantities of work is another thing altogether. A job takes as long as it takes, not how long some manager, who isn't even capable of doing that task himself, thinks it ought to take.
 

screenman

Legendary Member
Sometimes in life we take one step back to then take two forward, maybe that is what middle managers are doing. I should add I have never been a manager, I do know in my line of business the best sales person seldom makes the best manager and the best technician very seldom makes the best service manager, the step from spanner to pen is a long way for many.
 

SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
Respect goes both ways. I wonder where the problem lies if people start with that attitude.

I treat managers as I find them. If they work on a "light touch" basis and don't interfere with the way work gets done, they get a good amount of effort from me.
if they want to interfere and meddle, and try to teach granny to suck eggs, they'll find themselves having to deal with all the problems I would have just sorted out myself if left to do things my way. I won't tolerate being micro-managed, and will be the biggest possible pain in the arse to any manager who tries to operate that sort of regime.
 

SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
There always has been, and always will be, a place for militancy at work.
You don't need to use it though when dealing with reasonable managers, but it should always be there held in reserve for putting the idiot ones back in their boxes.
British Leyland was a classic example of an organisation with poor people management. Some parts of it had very little in the way of industrial relations problems, other bits were virtually at war. You can't attribute bad industrial relations entirely to union militancy, as it doesn't thrive in a vacuum. You need both bad management and militant staff in order to get fractious industrial relations.
The rail industry is a case in point, it's management is terrible, and it has a militant workforce.
 

screenman

Legendary Member
I was going to say how very British Leyland, but you have put it better.

I was going to say the same.
 

screenman

Legendary Member
There always has been, and always will be, a place for militancy at work.
You don't need to use it though when dealing with reasonable managers, but it should always be there held in reserve for putting the idiot ones back in their boxes.
British Leyland was a classic example of an organisation with poor people management. Some parts of it had very little in the way of industrial relations problems, other bits were virtually at war. You can't attribute bad industrial relations entirely to union militancy, as it doesn't thrive in a vacuum. You need both bad management and militant staff in order to get fractious industrial relations.
The rail industry is a case in point, it's management is terrible, and it has a militant workforce.

My late father was a TGWU shop steward for many years, he could stand any manager good or bad.
 
There always has been, and always will be, a place for militancy at work.
You don't need to use it though when dealing with reasonable managers, but it should always be there held in reserve for putting the idiot ones back in their boxes.
British Leyland was a classic example of an organisation with poor people management. Some parts of it had very little in the way of industrial relations problems, other bits were virtually at war. You can't attribute bad industrial relations entirely to union militancy, as it doesn't thrive in a vacuum. You need both bad management and militant staff in order to get fractious industrial relations.
The rail industry is a case in point, it's management is terrible, and it has a militant workforce.

The problem is that too often it is idiot, complacent workers who appear to want to decide if a manager is reasonable or not, based usually on how much they are left alone.

No organisation exists to give its employees an easy job for life.
 

SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
The problem is that too often it is idiot, complacent workers who appear to want to decide if a manager is reasonable or not, based usually on how much they are left alone.

In the workplace, people get judged by their peers, and if someone goes around rubbing people up the wrong way, they will inevitably cause a reaction. So long as things are running smoothly, I fully expect to be left alone. That's the way it works, keep off the staffs back and the job gets done. Decide to be a pain in the arse and we can easily make things grind to a halt! :laugh:
 

SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
Yep, have been a union member all my working life. Can't stand all the PC crap that goes with Unions and the Left in general these days, but have still always believed in the principle of union membership.
 
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