The Red Rose of Nissan

• THE NEW Nissan factory in Sunderland was opened on 11 September 1986 with a great fanfare of publicity : television advertisements, documentaries, newspaper supplements, news coverage of the formal opening by the prime minister . The theme of all this publicity was that the Nissan plant opened a new age. Here is a factory where managers and workers alike wear white coats and share the same canteen, where managers and workers alike are young (average age in the late twenties), a company where there have never been strikes, where trade unions are not 142 forbidden but are redundant because workers enjoy good conditions and identify with the aims of the company . The factory of the new age, of the new technology, of the new consensus . Light years away from the militancy of the car workers in the seventies . Light years away too from the macho manCOMMENTARY