Working practices
To continue the comparisons of British working practices with others, in the 1970s I was working in the Ruhr on a multinational project to supply gas pumping staions to the pipeline from Siberia to West Germany. Major suppliers were in the USA, Norway, The Netherlands, France and Scotland as well as W. Germany itself. The power to drive the pumps and associated electriocal and hydraulic systems was provided by US-designed industrial gas turbines.
Not long after my arrival, I was asked to see if I could find out why the turnover of workers from Scotland was much higher than from other countries. Talking to them I was told that what they found intolerable was being classified as "inefficient and bad workers" by German supervisors, for consistently taking longer to complete a task than others. What the Scottish lads were used to was "fettling to fit", while the standard practice at the Ruhr factory was to reject any part that needed such "fettling" and get a replacement, while also reporting the discrepancy for corrective action further up the supply chain. This, to the canny Scots, was a "shocking waste", which added to the resentment at being classified as, basically, unskilled by a shift supervisor under pressure to deliver.
Explanations of the different attitudes to parts arriving for assembly calmed the situation somewhat, but within a year all the Scots had gone back home with their craftsmans' attitudes unchanged and a poor opionion of German working practices.
However, the tight schedules set by the customer in Moscow were met, which was the main thing as far as we were concerned.
That what we delivered then sat in the snowy wastes far from Moscow for months because the customer's teams could not meet the schedules imposed by "the men from the Ministry" was another matter entirely ...