LETTER: Lower pay and fewer skills

TIM Lang and Yiannis Gabriel believe that "lean production techniques" lead to a "more highly skilled and better paid workforce" ("The shopping spree is over", 3 September).

On the contrary, through redundancy much expertise has been and is being lost, and companies will often now take on cheaper, less skilled labour. Indeed the very notion of flexibility or transferability of labour implies that skill and quality are likely to be compromised.

As for pay, it seems to me that - to date - it is only the very upper ranks that benefit.

John Massey

Basingstoke, Hants