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The Forum > General Discussion > Can We Get our Manufacturing Back ? Trumpery ?

Can We Get our Manufacturing Back ? Trumpery ?

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Continued.

He was told to get out of town by union leaders. He didn't, as it turned out he had 30 mates who wanted to work rather than go on useless strikes, & told the union people in no uncertain terms.

The large high speed cats I ran for tourists in the Whitsundays were built by NQEA in Cairns. One was new, & still having warranty problems. NQEA became hard to deal with after they got the contract to build navy patrol boats. They had to import a lot of their increased workforce from south, & got union problems with the southerners. {Mexicans are always trouble}.

Most of our problems were with multi technology systems, often requiring electrical, electronic hydraulic & perhaps air conditioning expertise to cure. The strikes that never stopped with these southern unionists were bad enough, but they had been forced to grant a 9 day fortnight, which meant it was only Tuesday Wednesday & Thursday when you would find all the required expertise at work together.

In fact we had to sort many of the designed &/or built in problems ourselves, which took almost 9 months, plus a lot of effort & money.

The 9 day fortnight was so unworkable in a small/medium business that when the patrol boat contract was finished they abolished it unilaterally. They had to suffer a 3 month strike, which saw most of the Mexicans return south, to get the business operable again.

It is this bloody mindedness by some that has cost us much industry, & made others simply unviable.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 18 July 2018 2:56:58 PM
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Has been,

Ah, I see - you don't want higher prices for imported goods, but lower wages for US workers. Is that it ? If they all got much lower wages, manufacturing companies would remain viable. So:

Hasbeen with megaphone: "Whadda We Want ?" "Lower Wages !" "When Do We Wannem ?" "NOW !"

Workers could go on strike for lower wages. Really dedicated workers could throw themselves on the battlements and demand NO wages at all. Yeah, that might work. That might force the companies to sit up and take notice. Bastards, paying good wages.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 18 July 2018 3:33:33 PM
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Australians have priced themselves out of the market with a higher minimum wage than than the UK, NZ. France, Germany, Canada and the US.
Posted by ttbn, Wednesday, 18 July 2018 4:29:09 PM
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Measured in Australian dollars, it is some 30% above the German national minimum wage, 50% above the UK’s, and 80% above Japan’s.
Posted by ttbn, Wednesday, 18 July 2018 4:36:56 PM
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Statement- "Can We Get our Manufacturing Back ? Trumpery ?"

Answer- There is some great work in carbon fibre manufacturing. This is the first good news for Australian manufacturing I've heard in a while. For a manufacturing industry it needs a business model, develop products that are in demand, hopefully for a long time. There are a number of potential opportunities but all the pollies and bureaucrata are Arts graduates. Even in industry more focus is on "soft skills". Overall for all the talk about innovation in fact not much is done. Howard's innovation policy was just tax breaks for his mates. Someone talked about the ladder of success a few years ago saying that a few rungs are missing. A lot of good ideas come from individuals- so there needs to be a way of bringing these ideas to market- we need to empower patriotic capable Australian's to make Australia the envy of the world. Our focus on the education industry is the anti-thesis of innovation- we're creating innovation for other countries. Intrenched business protectionism in Australia has suffocated innovation. For a while I've had the view that what is required is an understanding of the needs to support the business life cycle of businesses of different sizes. The business incubators I've seen are inapproapriate for startups- and just shows a misunderstanding of startups. The high price of land (and high growth) means it's harder to start businesses especially manufacturing. Innovation and Business Development involves partnerships- the high level of immigration has fragmented the community reducing opportunities for partnerships- yes it's increased the size of the Australian market. For those businesses currently operating in the Australian market I guess it's easy revenue in the short term. But as ethnic substitutes come online this revenue increase is lost in the medium term.
Posted by Canem Malum, Wednesday, 18 July 2018 4:37:38 PM
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It's interesting to look at the consumer habits of different ethnic groups. As with most problems to advance you have to understand the issues to a greater order of magnitude. For example to look at business investment is not enough- need to look at how that investment is applied- is it new products and manufacturing processes or just increased production capability. At some stage we will need to realise that globalised business is not in Australian interest- it's a small country- the view of a few of us is the anti-tariff / free trade propaganda is invalid. Global business will always try to create a bidding war- we need to turn the game around so that if global business wants to sell in Australia they have to make in Australia. Sometimes it's not possible to do this- balance of trade has been extremely important for security throughout history- but there needs to be an approapriate balance between self sufficiency and global trade. Some of us believe that the benefits of global trade can be achieved through other mechanisms such as the federal model. The western world has relied on their "advanced technology" since the beginning of the industrial revolution for their "trade surpluses"- soon they will no longer be able to do this. In order to avoid being trapped by varying movements of industrial segments they will need to be more self sufficient.
Posted by Canem Malum, Wednesday, 18 July 2018 4:43:46 PM
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