Silly Little Country

What Drugs is the Ontario Government On?

They are objecting to the Ericsson purchase of Nortel assets.
Paul Wells addresses why this is ill-conceived.

Which brings us to why Nortel isn’t — must not be — like GM. The only argument for saving the car companies was that their employees couldn’t go anywhere else. That’s a risible argument when it comes to telecomms engineers, and not just in the abstract. The economy absorbed previous waves of Nortel layoffs with little trouble. RIM hired them, or they started their own companies. When I visited Sweden in 2004 I visited all sorts of start-up companies. In every case, the founder was an Ericsson engineer who’d been left to his or her own devices when that company laid off thousands in 2000. Policy wonks have spent decades wishing the fisheries and car plants were staffed with superbly adaptable, highly-educated knowledge workers. Then they wouldn’t need bailouts. That’s Nortel.
If Tony Clement determines that RIM was unfairly left out of the Nortel bidding process, he should get it back in. But then its bid should stand or fall on the merits. The best way to ensure competitiveness is to ensure competition.

In my technology career I dealt with both Nortel and Ericsson (and a gazillion other companies, and often with the same individual as an employee of many different ones) - those employees were as mobile as their products and don't need help from me as a taxpayer!

posted by Alan Adamson @ 3:09 PM