British work-ethic condemned by Indian steel tycoon
British work-ethic condemned by Indian steel tycoon
Ratan Tata (centre) during a meeting of the 'UK-India CEO Forum, at Downing Street
By Michael Howie12:25PM BST 21 May 2011
Indian tycoon Ratan Tata made the comments just two months before one of his companies, Tata Steel, announced that it was looking at closing or mothballing part of its Scunthorpe plant, putting 1,200 jobs at risk. The plans would also see 300 jobs lost at its Teesside site.
Mr Tata, who is a member of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Group, and co-chairman of the UK-India CEO Forum, described his surprise at the attitudes of previous management at the steel-maker Corus and car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), which he bought in 2006 and 2008 respectively. Speaking of the previous bosses, he told The Times: "
It's a work-ethic issue. In my experience, in both Corus and JLR, nobody is willing to go the extra mile, nobody.
"
I feel if you have come from Bombay to have a meeting and the meeting goes till 6pm, I would expect that you won't, at 5 o'clock, say, 'Sorry, I have my train to catch. I have to go home.'
"
Friday, from 3.30pm, you can't find anybody in their office."
Mr Tata said that things are different in his native India.
"If you are in a crisis, if it means working to midnight, you would do it.
"The worker in JLR seems to be willing to do that; the management is not," he said.
The 73-year-old added that previously at JLR "the entire engineering group would be empty on Friday evening", but said things had improved.
"The new management team has put an end to that. They call meetings at 5 o'clock," he said.
On Friday Tata Group blamed a decline in the construction industry for the cuts in the north east, but it also announced that it will invest £400 million in its Long Products business over the next five years.
Unions said the jobs losses amounted to eight per cent of Tata's UK workforce, pledging to try to mitigate the impact of the decision, while Labour said it was a "hugely worrying" sign for industry.
Tata, which completed the sale of its Teesside Cast Products site in Redcar to Thai steel firm SSI earlier this year, launched a 90-day consultation with unions before the redundancies will start.
The firm said it was "reasonably confident" of achieving most of the job losses through voluntary redundancies, although it could not rule out compulsory lay offs.
Source:
British work-ethic condemned by Indian tycoon - Telegraph
Old news, but should be an interesting debate. What do y'all think? Do you agree with Mr. Tata?
ot one many Britishers i have seen are like that.
