@cockney_steve:
I've got to throw my hat in with EEngr, DWS and fenland787. The problems are far more likely to be management-related than on the shop floor.
I have no trouble whatsoever believing that most of the workforce are as they describe, i.e conscientious and hard-working, and situations like that described by EEngr, where it took 40 minutes to find a manager capable of performing the task would try the patience of a saint.
The explosion in managerialism (and sorry PAXboy, but the rot really took hold in the '80s) is a far more widespread issue than simply outsourcing. Even in-house, you can have teams that can have communications issues when everything has to go through management, and managers don't necessarily understand the problems.