Nissan Missed Opportunity

Back on December 13th Lord Allesley posted that bail outs should only be offered to industrys in a way that saw the tax payer get something back.
Yesterday Nissan announced over 1000 job loses. The impact of this on the tax payer is 1000 dole cheques per month. The impact on Nissan is lost skills.

Is their not something more productive that can be done in the short term.

On the basis that in 12 months many of these people could A) find new employment, B) be retrained C)be needed by Nissan surely a joint Government / Nissan initiative could be put in place.

If the Government gave Nissan the equivilant of the Dole Money & the income tax, by the time Nissan have saved the redundancy money they would have very little expense and could retain the skills for 12 months.

In return the government could insist they get to use their project managers, trainers and some staff in the public sector.

Imagine the benefits that they could bring.

Government could also insist that Nissan people go into their British supply chain and work on efficiency training the staff and building the processes to make them world beating. They could also use them for other companies that are having difficulties. Even the track workers at Nissan know how to for a quality circle and an impovement cell. Inaluble skills.

This approach would make much more sense than throwing tax payers money to have these people on the scrap heap, and then throwing another load of money at Business Link and the Learning and Skills council to help other businesses.

LA points out that due to the fact that this is common sense, it is very unlikely to happen.

LA