More Australian Manufacturing Gone

[Reaper]

Things look dire for ACL. Administrators were appointed yesterday and beyond the OEM drip of Ford till they find another supplier for engine bearings etc things don't look good.

Automotive Components Limited

Reaper

[Lumps of cheese]

Hmmm, does not look good at all. Been on shaky ground for a while though hasn't it?

[minux]

People sound surprised when these places go bust...how can these smaller companies keep operating with such low incomings and such amazingly high wages for Australian workers. Funnily enough, unions can be blamed for a lot of these sorts of businesse closing down, you can only push wages so high before companies start to crack. Mix this with cheaper products from China/India on top of a proposed CTS Australian industry will soon be non existent.

[Calaber]

People sound surprised when these places go bust...how can these smaller companies keep operating with such low incomings and such amazingly high wages for Australian workers. Funnily enough, unions can be blamed for a lot of these sorts of businesse closing down, you can only push wages so high before companies start to crack. Mix this with cheaper products from China/India on top of a proposed CTS Australian industry will soon be non existent.

Minux

Your point regarding unions and the high level of Australian wages is valid, but to remain truly competitive with the low-cost labour markets that abound in our part of the world, Australians would have to accept wage levels around 20-30% of what they are now. How car we expect Australians to accept Chinese wage levels for example, and work the sort of hours they do? We can't, for many good reasons. And it's not only the Chinese and the Indians.

Our locals car manufacturers now source so much from overseas instead of local manufacture, you can't help but wonder just what proportion is Australian. For example, I was looking at a wiring loom for my VY yesterday and it was made in Samoa! I thought they only exported coconuts and Samoans! Other wiring bits are sourced from Thailand or Mainmar (Burma to us old buggers). Why? Because their labour costs are as cheap as chips.

As long as these countries pay the incredibly low wages,and have the working conditions they do, we have no chance of being competitive, but would we really expect our people to live as they do?

Stuffed if I know the answer, unless it's to develop world-leading hi-technology that forces overseas buyers to purchase our goods. And certainly, not burden our manufacturers with idiotic pollution taxes that our competitiors would only laugh at.

[minux]

Calaber,

While i get your point, we do not have to drop wages as drastically as you say. I am still trying to understand how someone who sweeps floors in a factory should be paid 45k a year to do so. It seems ludicrous that such dead end jobs now pay fairly good money.In fact, I find it amazing that these sort of jobs in a lot of instances out do teachers in wages etc. All I am saying is, a lot of "low end" jobs pay as well as "high end" skilled jobs which seems very wrong. I know one company we worked for (before they went broke) did a report that basically said, if they could pay every worker 10k less a year, they would be able to keep the business viable. Obviously no one accepted the pay cuts, so many of them ended on the dole(poetic justice is just brilliant). The world these days seems like "if he has it, I want it". People are paid top dollar out of the box without any loyalty to a company etc.

Anyway, Im just ranting off topic now

[Calaber]

No, I don't really think you are all that far off topic with your comments. Reapers post points out what might happen, yours deals with why.

I wonder where our future lies, if we sit back and just become the "world's quarry" and let
someone else make everything for us. ACL is a reputable Aussie company that has been supplying good quality engine components for years. Even allowing for the current economic situation, it should have been assured of a reasonable future supplying local manufacturers and exporting as it has done. I realise it isn't in trouble because of 45k floor sweepers, but I wonder what its employees were earning on average and what their counterparts in Asia or the Sub-continent earn for doing the same job?

I suppose we are headed down a similar road to the UK. Their motor industry is owned by everybody but the Brits. Even the most British of all institutions, Rolls Royce, is owned Ithink by BMW though I'm not certain of my facts there. Their police drive BMW's and Volvo turbo wagons for pursuit and high sped work, nothing British. They use Astras and the like for normal duty, but are they still building cars at Luton, or whereever Vauxhall was based, or does it all come from Europe? We at least still have a strong domestic industry which is identifiably Australian and has been resilient enough to see the hard times through. It's ust a damned shame that companies like ACL have to go to the wall.