Deliberations

In 1989 I was working for a Sydney-based company that specialised in multimedia services (that was pre-web). NCR had put out the first ATMs which could show colour graphics and even laserdisc-stored video. I was sent to NCR's design and manufacturing facility in Dundee, Scotland to learn how to program and configure these machines. I met many dedicated professionals during that trip. Today I read in our Melbourne Age a story, which through a Google search I have found is taken from a Scotsman News article that the factory will be closed. Its function will be transferred to a new plant in Budapest where equivalent production staff earn only one-eighth of the Scottish salary. The Scotsman article reports the reaction of many staff, most of whom are gutted. The closure will have a knock-on affect likely leading to a regional economic recession. It isn't just the fact of the closure, but the manner in which it was done: the chief executive informed the staff by video link from his Dayton, Ohio headquarters. Only weeks earlier, staff were informed that their positions were not threatened by the opening of new plants elsewhere. It is clear that staff were treated with complete contempt, even though the union had never behaved militantly in six decades of plant operation. Now read this article in CNN Money ostensibly about the same event. This article is clearly constituted from NCR's official media release to its American audience. Notice that it doesn't actually talk about people or the impact that its closure will have on the community. It also doesn't actually admit to the plant closure which was clearly communicated to Dundee. Even the market manipulation is disgusting. How can managers and executives live with themselves? It surely must be a condition of promotion that such people are soul-less and completely lacking in any sense of social responsibility. Why else would they treat employees like the sheet metal and plastic used to make ATMs, the very conduits of capital in our mercenary world, rather than the living human beings on whom the company depends? Image credit: Scotsman