Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramrod
The thing is that businesses aren't charities. A business has to survive in order to continue trading......so that it can make profit and thereby pay wages, pay taxes, keep or create jobs......which pay more taxes.
I am against businesses squeezing workers so that they can keep shareholders happy but I am equally dismayed at the current vogue of bashing businesses simply because they might be profitable and have to live in the real world (as opposed to a world of left wing success envy and muddled wishful thinking)
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The problem is the a lot of businesses squeeze their workforces to the point where customers suffer.
Take my local Sainsburys. They installed self service checkouts apparently to improve customer service. When used properly, they do. However, at my local Sainsburys they frequently only have the cigarette counter and the self service checkouts open. The problem with this (for the customer) is that neither is designed to deal with trolleyloads, with the result that you often get a situation where one person is having to use one self checkout, and is blocking another with their trolley. I am aware that not all Sainsburys stores do this, but I am also aware that Sainsburys is currently reporting massively increased profits.
In essence, Sainsburys (like a lot of companies) are putting increased profits above service. They seemingly aren't willing to take the chance that improving the service may well improve sales, and therefore profits.
Now, I am not naive enough to think that increasing the number of staff will alway increase profits. It doesn't, and you just end up with staff standing round doing nothing, which is neither profitable or good for the company image. They need a balance though.
I think the problem is (and the reason these companies are being criticised) that a lot are replacing UK staff either with machines (in the case of the supermarkets) or with call centres in other countries, or just closing branches, complaining about costs, all while reporting record profits, and, in a lot of cases, record salaries and bonuses for those in charge.
Yes, the companies need to be profitable, but they don't need to report record profits every year, and on the flip side, the economy really needs at least some of the people being affected by this to have jobs.