You are adding up the workers kept of companies bought up, and not substracting those not kept. And you are speaking about a company with large capital influx and no responsibility other than to shareholders, rather than one denied of funds yet obliged to do public service. Apples and oranges, my friend.
finding the young, bright, hard working people
By the way, what shall happen with the rest in your world? And what about the assembled experience of old hands, and the not bright but hard-working who know all the tricks of the trade?
They were a strong proponent of qualities to improve quality
But sometimes with torturous detours. For example, after 1989, a big light bulb maker in Hungary which dominated parts of the world market (f.e. India) was bought up by GE. The first thing they did was to eliminate a large part of the production capacity (along with jobs) and apportion specific geopraphical areas for export -- and thus, also, India was forced to buy bulbs made elsewhere by GE for a higher price. It was years later that they realised that that old light bulb company had a lot of specialist engineers, and Neutron-Jack decided to put a development centre there. Today this former company is a nice good-running little branch, but far from what it could have been.
f your managers think that firing people is a way to raise productivity, they are far, far from the truth.
Very true.
and far, far from modern practises of business.
This is not true in my experience. We are speaking of the business experience of rescue schemes for major loss-making companies. Though it is true that in this case, this is made worse by economical theorical (ideological) ideas of what changes are needed to be made to a state company.
t just seems odd to entitle your diary "the wonders of capitalism", and then use as an example a government company
Nope. I see you are completely ignoring the case of the private company that made me turn the earlier comment into an extended diary and give it this title. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Despite all prior difficulties and one re-organisation a year, my small unit within the state railway company managed to mostly stay together, makes a profit by also taking industry orders, and is highly productive. But we learnt today that (1) we have been transplanted from one big branch to another, (2) our new owners are eyeing us for their quota for further workforce reduction ordered by the government. That we make profit doesn't count, in fact it appears that they will take away our right to take on orders. And even so, we already reached the minimum practicable level of workforce, taking away more will mean that we simply won't be able to do our job.
But we learnt today that (1) we have been transplanted from one big branch to another, (2) our new owners are eyeing us for their quota for further workforce reduction ordered by the government. That we make profit doesn't count, in fact it appears that they will take away our right to take on orders. And even so, we already reached the minimum practicable level of workforce, taking away more will mean that we simply won't be able to do our job.
No, I perfectly understand why the above could happen.
I don't understand why someone running a company would take actions to make a profitable unit unprofitable.
How many levels of hierarchy did the companies you worked in have had? Because the above sounds extremely naive. (For a private economy example of these things -- because there can be many reasons -- you can't understand, I wrote up one here.)
I've run businesses
So here is a management exercise for you.
I don't understand why someone running a company would deliberately take actions to make a profitable unit unprofitable.
