The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the manaaement

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SOME managers just get on quietly with exploiting their workforce. Others make a song and dance out of it.

BL management in their spare parts division .Unipart - fall noisily into the second category. They have gone on the road with a £150,000-a-time extravaganza of musical comedy described as 'Business Theatre"

The theme song • There's no business like component business'!) was backed up by catchy little cumbers entitled "Cooperation" and 'Winning is Possible"

Butchers

Among the cast were not only scantily-clad dancing girls and a model from Unipart's latest sexist calendar but also more demurely dressed (male) BL senior managers and directors. Appropriately in tie context of BL's reduncase: policy they wore striped butchers' jackets along with their panama hats.

20 coachloads of workers were bused in working hours by agreement with the convenors . to the Cowley performance.

They witnessed not only the 2½ hours of music and song but also speeches from Unipart's managing director John Neill and a guest appearance from a (non-dancing) Michael Edwardes.

No expense was spared in this furious effort at making workers enthusiastic about a firm that is grinding down their living standards and union rights. The total cost is estimated as high as £l million.

Senior managers cavorted on stage in an embarrassing double act in which sales director Tom Gotzi could be heard singing: "Oh Mr H, there's plenty to be done. If we always give the best, better than the rest, There's market waiting for us."

Marketing director Frank Hemsworth replies "Let's go get it Mr G"

But management shrewdly left it up to the troupe of dancing girls to put over the "foot-tapping" message of "Cooperation"

The show was significantly and cynically