For most of the workers employed at Pilkington in St Helens a career with the world-famous glass giant meant a

For most of the workers employed at Pilkington in St Helens, a career with the world-famous glass giant meant a job for life. Almost every family in the small Merseyside town has depended on the company for at least part of its prosperity for more than a century.
But the homely security of a job with “Pilks” has suffered a shuddering jolt during the past two years, as the company has struggled to slim down.Pilkington has shed more than 500 jobs in its four St Helens plants over the last two years, and now employees fear that their futures are even less assured.The company believes it can trim around pounds 100m from its pounds 940m annual overheads bill by implementing new cost-cutting measures over the next six months. Around pounds 60m of further savings are pencilled in by 2000.One worker at St Helens said: “When [Italian chief executive Paolo] Scaroni is seen in the works he always has a mobile phone to his ear and never stops talking. He seems to want to do everything at 100 mph.”And the restructuring he has overseen, since his arrival from Pilkington’s Italian subsidiary SIV in May, fits his image as an executive in a hurry.Last week, the company announced it was to slash 6,000 jobs worldwide. It also revealed it was to focus its review on the downstream operation, proposing to close down or sell off around half of its processing and merchanting business.There is also a rationalisation of its research and development operation underway, which has led to around 150 staff being cut from its Lathom facility near St Helens in the past month.All this has led to heightened concern among the 3,000 employees left in St Helens, who have seen the company’s plans alter course dramatically under Mr Scaroni.Roger Henshaw, regional officer of the MSF, one of the biggest unions at Pilkington, insists that workers realise there is a need for change, but he believes that Mr Scaroni’s accelerated timetable could backfire.He said: “Pilkington has a history of excellent industrial relations, good conditions and a paternalistic attitude to its employees. But that could all be lost in the drive to ensure that it is a profitable, efficient market leader.”Nobody is denying the need for change, but what has happened since Scaroni came in is that the process of change has accelerated.”Workers are also critical of the move to reduce the company’s downstream operation, which they fear will strip the firm of guaranteed outlets for Pilkington glass.And in a company that thrived on the success of pioneering the float- glass process, which revolutionised manufacture across the world in the 1950s by using molten tin to carry glass from the furnace instead of rollers, employees are also disgruntled that jobs have been shed in research and development.Mr Henshaw said: “In research and development, the company is asking for projects to be prioritised, but this seems to be cutting costs in the short-term rather than taking a long-term view.”It has to be difficult to prioritise in research because you do not know how things are going to turn out. Pilkington revolutionised manufacturing through the float-glass process and often development is about taking risks.”David Roycroft, head of corporate affairs for Pilkington, insists that the changes will reduce the company’s overheads and consolidate its position as one of the world’s biggest glass manufacturers.He said: “When Paolo Scaroni came in, some changes had already been made but the feeling was that they were not taking place fast enough.Pilkington believes that the reduction in its downstream operation will actually increase the number of outlets that buy its glass, because former local rivals, who would previously have avoided buying from the company, may now choose them as a supplier.q Roger Bryson, chief reporter for the ‘Liverpool Daily Post’, has covered Pilkington for two years..

The BBC will take another leap towards becoming a global commercial media group on Tuesday when it launches a news service on the Internet, a week before its 24-hour rolling news channel, to be shown on cable and BBC1 late at night, begins. The new services follow yesterday’s launch of pay-TV channels by Flextech that make commercial use of the BBC’s TV programme library for the first time. The BBC plans similar services in the US.
The new developments are all part of the BBC’s strategy to transform itself from public service broadcaster to a digital multimedia company with a global reach, able to take on commercial competitors, including CNN and News Corp. They are also part of a belated campaign to leverage the brand internationally.”We’re at the starting blocks of changing the public service tradition in the BBC for a new age, and there’s lots more to come,” said Tony Hall, chief executive of BBC News. He said the BBC can continue to perform a public service role and develop a separate position as a commercial player. BBC News Online, the Internet service, is an example of this dual approach.Analysts agree. “The BBC’s Internet service is about reaching new audiences with quality TV,” said Ramona Liberoff, executive consultant at KPMG’s information, communications and entertainment group.

She said it could use that reputation to sell its other programmes on a commercial basis.Both the Internet service and rolling news are funded out of licence fee payments and will be available worldwide free-of-charge. Mr Hall said he plans to use half the 30 per cent savings targeted by the BBC over the next five years, which included job cuts, to continue funding News 24 and BBC News Online.The services will carry no advertising, but Hall said other Internet services, developed by the BBC’s commercial arm, will carry advertising. It will also offer an Internet version of Top Gear, its TV programme about cars, but under a “Beeb” brandname.Copyright: IOS & Bloomberg. You might have thought that Cadbury had taken surrealism as far as it could go in the 1980s with its infamous “Flake” adverts, which for some reason featured shots of an iguana slithering across a telephone while an enticing-looking woman simulated fellatio (with the flake, not the lizard).

But how mundane all that seems now following the company’s bizarre recent reversals at the hands of m’learned friends. First of all there was the ruling from Europe’s law lords that the description “milk chocolate” was misleading and unacceptable, given the comparatively low cocoa content in British products. This decision was bad enough for consumers who’ve grown up with the term, but even worse for Cadbury when you consider that a modern-day Flake ad would have to go something like this: “Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate tastes like chocolate with a 5 per cent vegetable fat content never tasted before.”
But a still more bitter defeat was to follow last week when the High Court upheld a complaint from the Swiss chocolate industry that Cadbury had infringed some sort of territorial copyright law by naming one of its products “Swiss Chalet”. Never mind that emblazoned on the packaging is the word “Cadbury” – a name so synonymous with British chocolate that you can taste the products when you say it; consumers, it seems, might think they were buying the “real thing”.In some cases this might just be true – though only, I suspect, for people who’ve purchased a “Swiss Chalet” after imbibing long and hard of one of the products from Diageo – but overall it’s plain nonsense .. or even milk nonsense. As far as I know, for example, Swiss Rolls have not been sued for sponging off that country’s reputation for incomparable cakes, nor have British restaurants faced litigation for passing off chips as French Fries, and nor has the fashion chain Oasis taken the band of the same name to court for any suggestion that people might think the Gallagher brothers are big girls’ blouses. The only souls to whom all these chocolate capers make any sense are the lawyers, who are probably laughing all the way to their Swiss banks. For them – I’d wager the costs of OJ Simpson’s defence team – the fun has only just begun..

Two giants of the corporate-identity world recently decided to merge their own identities when Interbrand joined up with Newell and Sorrell. And it appears to be a marriage of like-minded people: Interbrand is the consultancy which dreamt up the imaginative but seemingly obscure name “Zeneca” (a play on the word “Zenith”) when ICI split itself in two, while Newell and Sorrell was responsible for the weird and wonderful “world images” which appear on British Airways’ tailfins. So what wacky name have they devised for themselves as they undergo their own corporate makeover? “Interbrand Newell and Sorrell”, that’s what!
Now that’s just creativity gone mad.IF YOU want to know who’s steaming ahead in the steaming metropolis, a good place to start might be the Official London Book of Lists, a guide to the capital’s leading companies.There are plenty of sections in this book – highlighting the rising stars in any field from architects to office cleaners – but the real nuggets are to be found under “Insurance”. Here you will come across companies offering to cover you if your pet Boa Constrictor strangles someone, a key employee is kidnapped and held to ransom, or you’re abducted by aliens. No mention, though, of a policy protecting you against charges of plagiarism from the country that brought us the cuckoo clock An oversight, surely?.