Quote:
Where will SERCO get its cheap work force from when there will be no trained technicians with a pension to recruit. The sums won't add up when they have to spend some of the money they receive for their contracts on training, and paying a decent wage!
Haltonapp
Nail, Head
I recall pointing this out from a Flight Safety perspective in 1992, and that it wouldn't show up for 20 years until drawdown flattened out, but then the Service would be totally f#cked.
It's a bit like building a pretty house on that really cheap land next to the volcano.......
Unfortunately whilst we have a revolving door of politicians as heads of shed, some of whom keep thinking that Defence is a business
and continually try to impose business practices
on Defence, whilst believing that more and more of Defence can be farmed out to contractors because that saves money
and industry are the most efficient
way of delivering "stuff" we are doomed to live in an ever decreasing spiral. I had thought that SofS might be on the verge of changing his mind follwoing Defence's bail-out of the Olympics and G4S but unfortunately the "Whole Farce Concept" is being talked about again.
Its not as if we don't have experience of this happening - one of the luckiest bits of Defence "planning" was the closure of RAF Finningley in the 90s - just as the aircraft maintenence contractor was about to have to start raising his bill dramatically because he had to introduce and charge for a tech apprenticeship scheme by used up the pool of retiring RAF techies and pi**ing them off completely by paying such rubbish wages. Those of us who served through the first rounds of contractorization never forecasted this....... Oh Yes. We did. WE TOLD YOU SO!!!!