Breaks, then, are rather better if scheduled. There’s a half-hour break during each shift but, while there is a canteen (I couldn’t tell you if it serves whatever the local equivalent of Volkswagen’s currywurst is), the size of the place means that most of the workers wouldn’t be able to walk there and back, let alone stop to eat, within the half hour.
Instead, there are multiple breakout rooms dotted around the site, more than 2000 vending machines, plus 200 small shops, so they can maximise rest time. Despite rubberised floors to ease stress on joints, specialist chairs or lifting equipment, electric wrenches and more, putting cars together remains hard work.
People are treated much better than they used to be, of course. Robots or machines are there to assist carrying and installing heavy items like wheels and radiators (both towards the end of the assembly process), but still, the average age of the worker is only 38.
Wages, though, are the highest for manual labour in the Czech Republic and, as with so many industrial towns, the plant and city effectively exist as one entity – even an ancient local cemetery lives entirely within the factory compound, so visitors need a pass to gain access.
And with that integration between work and life, as in British steel cities, comes an immense pride in local productivity. High-school children come on work experience here, those who obtain jobs can lease a Skoda aged 18, and Skoda owns the city’s university too.