Amusement

[andrewducker]

Name the following business.

It has a workforce of 39,000 outside the UK, with just 6,000 staff in Britain.

Its biggest business is chewing gum.

The focus of much recent investment has been Poland, to replace UK production.

And 50% of the business and management came from the takeover of the confectionery company Adams from an American drugs business some five years ago.

Who is this faceless, heartless global conglomerate, which opportunistically shifts its capital and people to wherever the financial returns are greatest?

It's Cadbury.

From

Comments

[0olong.livejournal.com]

There are a number of reasons to be wary of being too ready to export jobs, though, none of which strike me as exactly nationalistic.

1. If we end up killing productive industries in Britain, we're effectively locked into having to import products. If conditions change and it stops being economically viable to import that stuff (for instance, 'foreign' workers are no longer available at rates massively below what we'd accept in Britain), we're pretty much fucked.

2. Importing goods is environmentally unfriendly (and in the case of food, often results in lower-quality goods because they have to travel further). This cost is often not (adequately) reflected in the monetary price. This is another reason to be wary of reason 1. - it seems likely that better mechanisms will be put into place later to reflect the true costs, whereupon we may be stuck paying more or accepting inferior goods because our own industries have been sacked.

3. As momentsmusicaux suggests, there is a case to be made for viewing with some suspicion the morality of an arrangement which is built on workers in other places being paid vastly less than British ones. But as you've already countered, this one is particularly complicated...