A profit of £100m - some things to consider:

1. How much capital you have employed to generate that profit

2. It also depends how much of that profit is operating profit

3. What does the cashflow position of the company look like - as the saying goes profit is sanity but cash is king

4. What are the long term order books looking like - it could be they don't look so hot so it makes prudent sense to downsize now in order that supply of labour matches matches demand for product two years down the line - that is the job of management - strategy!!!

Maybe you could answer these questions rather than getting on your high horse - then we can have an informed debate or you could just name the company we can get a set of accounts from companies house and continue the debate based on fact rather than annecdotal notions

Whilst you have asked valid questions (even though one of them shows you didn't read my post fully) you still have to end up with the typical sort of dig that is typical of many on here.

Such a shame that many of you cannot have a serious debate.

So if it offends then ignore the last sentence and answer the serious questions, you can't have a serious debate if you are not prepared to contribute.

I have answered the serious questions



Unlike some on here, I can't answer posts at whatever time of day they come in at and I cannot see how you can imply that I haven't contributed.

Well if you just look a couple of posts above this one you'll see one that asked some questions for you to answer, you preferred to complain about a dig at the end rather than answer the questions.

I appreciate you may not be able to but they do provide some insight into the issues that you raised on the previous page, why ignore them ?

If you read my response again you will see that I have put my answers in bold in the quoted post from Serge A. Storms.

Move along please, nothing to see here...

OK name the company and we will be able to get a set of stat accounts from companies house and we can verify that what you say is correct and have a serious debate.

£300m cash contribution to the parent? was that just a repayment of funds lent to the company by the parent in the first place?

So many imponderables - just name the firm what's the big secret?

They are making a sixth of the workforce redundant so yes.



He evidently can't answer this.

I live down south nowadays, so forgive me if I've got my wires crossed...

But I was told that 'one' of the reasons the refuse guys were being asked to take a paycut was due to the council's oversight in not reacting to the 'equal pay' issue that raised it's head (via europe?) 3 years or so?
The council are now under pressure to be seen to pay equal wages to men/women, so rather than raise the wages of the female staff, they have opted to bring the men' wages down to the ladies level - and in turn, save a load of cash.

Like I say, I don't know if this is true or not - but either way I think the whole thing reflects really badly on the council - unless of course all the council bigwigs are also taking a 20/30% cut....

If they raised the wages of the females it would require a hike in the council tax of approx 18% - a non runner.

And law suggests the ladies in the office should earn what the bin men earn - not sure if that is correct but that is how I read it

The £300m was a repayment but is an indication of the fact that the company is cash rich and if it was facing the problems it claims why didn't it ask the parent company to let it keep the money. After all the parent company didn't need and thqat anmount of money could have paid for a lot of staff development so that come 2010 we'd be in an excellent position.

As regards naming the company, there are obvious reasons for this - most companies would take a dim view of this sort of discussion.

My bin hasn't been emptied for 5 weeks now.

None of the financial evidence given to either the Works Council, Trade Unions or Redundancy Consultative Forums and as I have summarised here would indicate we are in trouble.