During the months of uncertainty over Longbridge's future, and despite strong signals of job losses at both Honda and Ford factories in Britain, the union leaders made no attempt to link up the struggles of workers at the different companies. Union representatives at each plant regard the workers at another company as their competitors. In Rover's case, this saw them leading chauvinist campaigns and demonstrations, demanding that German workers should lose their jobs. The real concern of the union leaders throughout the crisis at Longbridge was how they would preserve their own privileges and safeguard relations with the new management. He will have won kudos for enabling the government and BMW to manage the Rover crisis, and particularly for ensuring the success of the Phoenix bid.
Phoenix are now heavily dependent on the unions to deliver further cutbacks and speed-ups.
Had BMW retained ownership of Rover, it planned to cut a further 4,000 jobs, raise productivity by up to 30 percent and shift abroad more than half of the current volume of component work currently supplied to Rover. Most market commentators foresee that the Phoenix operation will end up looking very similar to that planned by Alchemy. Far from producing 275,000 cars a year, the actual number could well be around 150,000, or even lower. To try and tie workers into a significant increase in exploitation, Phoenix are proposing to make the workforce partial shareholders. Even so, both Phoenix and Byers admitted that the rescue plan was only viable for the short and medium term.