Word: musts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...consequence, as well as a continuing cause, of the sluggishness is the decline of three basic industries?steel, textiles and shipbuilding?that provide 4.3 million European jobs. Many companies in these ailing sectors have grown too unwieldy and inefficient to compete in a changing world. To survive, they must shrink, evolve and innovate. Says West German Economics Minister Count Otto Lambsdorff: "There is no reason for losing our heads, but the seriousness of the situation is not to be underrated...
Business leaders also complain that for social and political reasons it has become too difficult to fire redundant workers. One result is that companies with diminishing production cannot cut their costs; their profits fall, and they must borrow money, not to invest in new techniques and equipment but merely to keep the factories turning. "If a small-or medium-size enterprise runs into temporary cash problems," says De Bodinat, "chances are it will go bankrupt. But a big, dying industry can generally count on government subsidies. This is the opposite of survival of the fittest. It is maintaining dinosaurs while...
...foreign steel suppliers freeze 1978 deliveries at 1976 levels. Also, 13 petrochemical companies formed a cartel in man-made fibers, carving up markets and agreeing to joint cuts in production. Says Fiat Chairman Giovanni Agnelli: "I don't at all like the idea of closing Europe off, but we must do it just for a while on condition that we emerge with a more competitive industry...
With the time gained by temporary protectionist measures and a subsistence diet of subsidies, Europe's threatened industries must accomplish a formidable task of rejuvenation. In West Germany, Strukturwandel (structural change) is constantly on the lips of industrialists, politicians, economists and union bosses. The term covers a variety of measures: a switch to profitable products, heavy investment in machinery, "rationalization," or reduction of labor forces where warranted, the retraining of surplus workers, even a shift of emphasis in the education system away from the humanities to technical training in new industries. "Our industry must manufacture goods that others...
...common in the farm belt, protested: "Carol Tucker Foreman, one of agriculture's biggest enemies, is at work right now discrediting the meat industry and causing the public to lose confidence in American farm products." The meat industry has sued to block her order that nitrite levels in bacon must be sharply reduced, from 150 parts per million now to 40 parts per million next year. Still, Nader found the order too weak and roasted her for caving in to the food industry...