I was very impressed with everything that Mr. Allday [Convenor of the Shop Stewards] said in his speech of welcome. I just wish that everyone in the country could have heard what he said.
They would have very great faith then not only in the future of industry but in the future of our country as a whole.
He put it all in a nutshell when he spoke about the Bulmer team: because a team by very definition works and pulls together and you get so much further in life when you pull together than if you all pull apart.
Everyone in this company has a common interest in success—the success of the company is the success of the people who work in it. It also satisfies the consumer, also brings some return to those who put their savings in it.
I was very glad that in all my conversations no-one distinguished between management, shareholders and workers because they are all part of the team.
I sometimes get irritated when people talk about management as if they were not part of the workforce. They usually are employees and are usually exactly the same as the rest of the people who work in it.
One of the excellent things here is that people not only work here but they do, in fact, come to have a share in the operation of the company and they also have an employees' shareholders meeting.
So you all have a common interest in success and you all decide and know what to do and how best to do it, and take part in those decisions.
You all have a common interest in adapting to change. If a [end p1] company is to stay prosperous it has to continue to satisfy the next generation of customers and to know what they want—and indeed to put new things on the market.
You have a common interest in tremendous attention to detail, the kind I have seen as I walked through this plant. It does make all the difference between profit and no profit.
And you have, too, a common interest in seeing that profits are made. Unless there are profits there just won't be enough to invest in the next generation's success.
In all of these things you have a common interest; in all of those things you have tremendous consultations.
In these days it is called ‘employee involvement’ and ‘management communication’.
They are not really words that I like: it always seems to me that they were invented by people who did more lecturing about how to run a company than actually running or working in a company themselves.
But it is the modern way of expressing exactly the kind of co-operation and team work that we see here.
And I must tell you that I am all for it.
It seems to me that the success of a company is the success of all its people, that everyone has the same interest in it. Everyone therefore must be involved, must know the facts and feel that they are intimately concerned with the future of the company, the future of their own jobs and the future of the family, because, perhaps one day, the next generation will work here …
There's an old song called “Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative” … that is exactly what you are doing here. [end p2]
Each and every person here is equally important, all different but equally important.
It's really rather like a jigsaw puzzle—every piece is a different shape, every piece has a different pattern on the front, but when you fit it all together it makes a whole picture. That is the kind of co-operation which you have here. That is the kind of involvement of everyone which you have here.