LIMITED COMPANY

Limited Company. After a period of euphoria thanks to the successful design and sales of a revolutionary machine tool in 1995, the Tornos Factory in Moutier was quickly brought to the brink of bankruptcy. In 2001, a wave of layoffs followed and in just 13 months, 600 out of 1200 employees lost their jobs. Events at Tornos are just one example in the recent history of industrial failures that have their roots in faulty economic planning. Stories like it air daily in the media, adding to our confused understanding of the rollercoaster of industrial success and failure. This film questions not just the sense of optimism at the heart of the liberal free market economy, but the way it is manipulated by management and its impact on the workforce. An administration that acts as if its the factory owner, a workman who is given the title of line manager, a workplace that becomes a production centre, the name of a factory that becomes the name on a share certificate? I feel as though I?m getting lost in a game, where the meanings of words are casually manipulated _ words like family, responsibilty, trust, autonomy.