1. What does this extract suggest about newspaper management and the printers’ trade union at the time?
Bryson shows that newspaper managements were not very efficient and that the printers’ trade union had been able to negotiate ridiculously uneconomical conditions. They had excessively high staffing levels (so that The Daily Telegraph was actually paying 300 people who didn’t even come in to work), high salaries (plump means fat, or in this case, high), and excessive bonus payments, so that they got paid extra for setting pages with
editors’ marks on them, for setting foreign words etc. They even got compensated for not setting the type for advertisements that were done elsewhere.
2. What does the first sentence --- ‘to say that Fleet Street … was out of control barely hints at the scale of matters’ --- mean?
He means that the situation was so serious (for the newspapers, not for their printers) that to describe the situation as ‘out of control’ isn’t nearly strong enough. The situation was so bad it could not continue.
3. Bryson makes one statement that probably isn’t true, . a deliberate exaggeration. Which do you think it is?
The statement about senior printers being among the top two per cent of British earners is apparently true. I suspect that the bit about printers receiving special bonus payments for the white space at the ends of lines (i. e. where they did not have to set any type) is a humorous exaggeration. But I am not certain. 4. Do you know what happened to the printers at British newspapers soon after the period Bryson is writing about? All the newspapers started using a computerized system that allowed them to create pages from articles typed by the
journalists on their own computers, so that type-setting became unnecessary, and all the printers lost their jobs. There were huge demonstrations by trade unions and sympathizers outside the new printing works of The Times for several months in 1986, which is where the photograph on page 50 was taken. 2b Reading
1 What are frequent causes of bad labor relations?
Bad communications; an adversarial (management versus workers) attitude; a lack of consultation; and unions defending uneconomic working practices.
2 What have the consequences of labor-market deregulationbeen? Working conditions of many people getting much worse; the
creation of many unskilled, casual, part-time jobs done by non-unionized workers.
3 Whey can these consequences be a problem for management? If workers are not represented by a union, there is no one
representing the workers for management to negotiate with before or during a dispute. 2c Vocabulary
Find the words in the text which mean the following. 1. people who work with their hands: manual workers
2. a union for workers with a particular type of job: trade union 3. to ask someone’s opinion before making a decision: consult 4. an opponent or enemy: adversary
5. too expensive, wasteful, loss-making: uneconomic 6. unlimited and unfairly used power: tyranny
7. ending or relaxing restrictive laws: deregulation
8. areas of the economy run by the local or national government: the public sector
9. hostile, almost aggressive, seeking conflicts: confrontational 10. a large corporation, made up of a group of companies: conglomerate 2d Discussion
Peter Drucker says ‘Management is and has to be a power.’ What does this mean?
When Peter Drucker writes ‘Management is and has to be a power’, he means that management has a distinct role, which is quite simply to manage --- to decide what the company is going to do, today and in the future, how it is going to allocate its
resources, and so on --- without unnecessary outside interference. But by saying that power without any restraint or control becomes tyranny, he implies that unions have a legitimate right to defend the interests of workers.
Regarding the final question, large companies sometimes receive fiscal advantages (such as reduced taxes) from governments if they open a factory and create jobs in an area with high
unemployment. In these cases they perhaps should not be allowed to close the factory as soon as the subsidies end. New words in this unit 07
Adversary; collective bargaining; consult; deregulation; go-slow; industrial action; manual worker; partner; picket; slowdown; strike; trade union; uneconomic; working practices; working-to-rule
Unit 08 Production
1a Discussion
1. What particular skills do you think production and operations managers require?
Production and operations managers should presumably be interested in making products or providing services rather than simply making money. They usually need a lot of technical knowledge (about manufacturing processes) and mathematical abilities. Even in these days of increasing automation, good human relations skills are also a clear advantage.
2. What do you think the objectives of a production department usually are?
The objectives of the production department are usually to produce a specific product, on schedule, at minimum cost. But there may be other
criteria, such as concentrating on quality and product reliability; producing the maximum possible volume of output; fully utilizing the plant or the work force; reducing lead time; generating the maximum return on assets; ensuring flexibility for product or volume changes, and so on. Some of these objectives are clearly incompatible, and most companies have to choose among price, quality, and flexibility. There is an elementary trade-off between low cost and quality, and another between low cost and the flexibility to customize products or to deliver in a very short lead time.
1b Vocabulary:
These are some basic words used in relation to industrial production. Match them up with the definitions below.
Capacity, component, inventory, lead time, location, outsourcing or contracting out, plant, subcontractor
1. Any company that provides goods or services for another one: subcontractor 2. Any of the pieces or parts that make up a product, machine, etc.: component
3. Buying products or processed materials from other companies rather than manufacturing them: outsourcing or contracting out
4. The (maximum) rate of output that can be achieved from a production process: capacity
5. The buildings, machines, equipment and other facilities used in the production process: plant
6. The geographical situation of a factory or other facility: location
7. The stock of any item or resource used in an organization (including raw materials, parts, supplies, work in
process and finished products): inventory 8. The time needed to perform an activity . to manufacture or deliver something): lead time
1e Comprehension
According to the text, are the following sentences TRUE or FALSE? If they are false, say why.
1. T In JIT, products are ‘pulled’
through the manufacturing process from the end, rather than ‘pushed’ through from the beginning. (Each section of the production process makes the necessary quantity of the necessary units at the necessary time – which is when it is required by the next stage of the
manufacturing process, or by distributors or customers.
2. F JIT originated in American
manufacturing. (Ohno mentioned American retailing)
3. F JIT encourages production workers to exceed their production targets. (Quite the contrary: it encourages them to produce exactly the amount required) 4. T Companies using the JIT system and outsourcing many of their components are highly dependent on their subcontractors. (…if a single subcontractor fails to deliver a component on time, the whole production process is sabotaged) 5. F In a JIT system, a delivery of
defective components can be replaced from the reserve inventory (There is virtually no inventory)
6. T JIT depends on harmonious partnerships between a company and its suppliers
(…the Japanese industrial system relies on mutual trust and long-term relationships.)
7. T Japanese production systems generally speed up the entire manufacturing process. (This avoids all the waiting and moving time involved in sending half-finished items from one department to another… JIT… should ensure that there is no waste… from idle workers waiting for parts.)
8. F JIT leads to economies of scale. (The Japanese also prefer small, specialized
新剑桥商务英语高级习题答案
