REGARDING the comments about the British aircraft industry. It is more than 10 years since the TV series 'All our working lives,' on the decline of British industry, looked at aircraft manufacture and showed bad shopfloor practice of a type I had never seen before.
An estimator offered 300 hours as a measure of work for a squad of men to plate and rivet either body or wing sections.
The 'heavy' of the squad immediately threatened the estimator with annihilation for such a miserly offer. The second member of the act jumped between them pretending to restrain the 'heavy.'
They so intimidated the estimator that he upped the offer and settled for 400 hours.
The squad had themselves assessed the measure at 250 hours.
I have had to cope with duffs in the workplace to such a degree that, in one industry, if anyone asked me "how many people work at this firm?" I immediately replied "about half of us."
JAMES RATCLIFFE, Thomas Street, Haslingden.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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