All jobs are important but some jobs are more important to a nation than others. The German government isn’t investing billions in Opel simply to keep thousands of blue-collar workers in jobs screwing cars together. (Although that is part of the reason.)
Any nation, with a moderately well educated (and preferably inexpensive) workforce can assemble cars. And when the pressure builds on Opel further to cut costs, no doubt its car assembly will increasingly be relocated (it’s already started) to cheaper countries, most likely Russia. Car assembly is now almost an international commodity. Companies will gravitate to where this commodity can be purchased at the lowest possible price.
The auto industry and the brain drain
Far more important than car assembly, is car creation. GM’s two biggest engineering centres, worldwide, are in America and Germany. This is where most GM cars – be they Opels or Chevrolets, Cadillacs or Saabs – are conceived, designed, engineered, developed and signed-off. These are the high value university educated jobs that First World countries need for continuing, or even better, growing, prosperity. This is why Germany and America are investing heavily in the future of their motor industries. To borrow an analogy from another industry, better to have a Silicon Valley than a low-cost industrial estate that mass-assembles computers.
The British government has promised aid to Vauxhall, to guarantee the continuation of relatively low paid jobs at Ellesmere Port and Luton. These jobs clearly matter to the 5,000 people who have them, and to the wider communities. I’d just as soon my tax paying money went on those 5,000 people than on another wretched bank. But Vauxhall, and GM Europe, does virtually no ‘high value’ work here. All Vauxhalls are just Opels with different badges. They are German cars built by Brits, just as Californian-designed Apple computers are assembled by the Chinese. Germany and California make these respective products desirable. Britain and China simply mass make them.
Why MPs should act to save our industry
So when the government decides where to put its money, to protect our periled car industry, it should prioritise companies and facilities that offer the high value jobs – mostly engineers – that a highly developed country demands. Those car makers that use British engineering expertise, to develop British-conceived cars are, in no particular order, Jaguar, Ford, Land Rover, Bentley, Lotus, Aston Martin and Nissan.
When Lord Mandelson starts to dole his pennies, after he’s finished lavishing the big money on the banks, those are the companies he should be supporting.
>> Click here for more blogs by Gavin Green
>> Click here for blogs by the rest of the CAR team