GM Workers Go Into Training to Implement Team Concept

Six General Motors workers in the Van Nuys plant call themselves the Cobras, not because anyone has told them to adopt a name, but because they feel they should have one.

When lunch break comes, they go to the same restaurants. When it’s time to study, they do that together too.

And, when they talk about the critical work-rule changes they are trying to implement at the plant, they cannot help but notice how their own camaraderie contrasts with commonplace tales of apathy and disorganization on the assembly line, of botched work and fudged inspections.

“I don’t want to retire and never make a decision about how the cars are made,” said Ignazio G. Cordaro, 51, one of the Cobras who worked in the plant’s paint shop. “I want to be proud of the cars. I want to make things better.”

That’s the spirit GM and the United Auto Workers are trying to instill in the 2,500 hourly Van Nuys workers as the plant converts to a Japanese-style “team concept” manufacturing system, narrowly approved by the rank-and-file last spring.

The immediate goal of the new manufacturing system is to reduce auto defects, whether it’s doors that hang crooked or blotched paint jobs. By making teams responsible for whole auto sub-assemblies, such as entire instrument panels or transmissions, workers not only have several jobs to do instead of single, small, mundane taks, but the hope is they will have more motivation to make sure the jobs are done right.

“On an assembly line, you’re nothing more than a machine,” said Rick Bowers, one of the Cobras, a 15-year GM veteran who adjusted car frames. “We’re all capable of more than just pushing screws.”

As the first step, the Cobras are among the 125 workers who have been taken off the Van Nuys assembly line and are now spending eight hours a day in a classroom. What they learn will help spearhead the overhaul of the plant.

The entire plant is scheduled to begin operating under the new system in early May.

Yet many of the Van Nuys workers remain skeptical of coming changes and joke about being forced to eat sushi or do jumping jacks along Van Nuys Boulevard. They say team concept cannot work in a plant they claim is still divided over the issue.

“It’s programmed for failure,” said a high-ranking UAW official who has long opposed team concept. “All I do at this point is shake my head and wonder.”

Test Case for GM

The Van Nuys plant is seen as a test case for GM as the world’s biggest auto maker tries to reverse its sliding market share. If the team concept works at the San Fernando Valley plant, it will probably be put into place at other GM plants.

In the classroom, the 125 workers are being taught topics straight out of college-level sociology texts--from conflict resolution to group dynamics, from motivation to ergonomics, the science of adapting work conditions to people.

These workers will soon start teaching the rest of the plant what they have learned. Most of the 125 are likely to end up among the plant’s 300 “team leaders.”

Team leaders will head the six- to eight-person groups that, at least in theory, will have much more say over how the plant builds the sporty Chevrolet Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds that roll out of its doors. (Even if team leaders get more clout, they will get paid $13.78 an hour, only 50 cents an hour more than regular workers.)

To date, the only Big Three auto factory that uses extensive worker-participation techniques is the successful GM-Toyota joint venture in Fremont, Calif., which makes Chevrolet Novas and Toyota Corolla FX-16s.

It is only natural that the trend start in the West, the Cobras say, where the rank-and-file is more receptive to such new ideas. Unlike the GM plant in Norwood, Ohio, where signs warn against parking foreign cars in the company lot, many GM employees in Van Nuys unabashedly drive imports because they say the cars require fewer repairs.

Plant manager Ernest D. Schaefer and UAW regional director Bruce Lee both say the team concept is essential to the survival of the Van Nuys plant, which has long been endangered because its West Coast location is far from suppliers and most of the cars’ customers.

The more centrally located, but antiquated, sister plant in Norwood, Ohio, makes the same model cars for hundreds of dollars less. However, that plant is scheduled to close by mid-1988. The Van Nuys plant remains open, local officials say, because of its value as a test site for the new work system.

Those who applied to be trainers and team leaders, have approached “going back to school” with gusto, even if some have a hard time translating the lessons they are learning into simple language.

“We’re talking about statistical process control,” said an eager Samuel Bass, 39, who was a plant maintenance worker, as he practiced his teaching skills on fellow trainers.

“You got to say what that means, man,” said Raul Acosta, a 20-year GM veteran.

Explains Terminology

Bass thought for a second. “It means, if I’m on the line and I’m getting bad screws, I’ve got to mark it down on a tally sheet,” he began. “So we can hunt down the problem, instead of hoping an inspector will catch it.”

To further simplify things, every worker will receive a pocket-sized laminated card that lists the key theories of W. Edwards Deming, an American management consultant who became legendary in Japan in the 1950s for his advice on quality control but whose work was ignored until recently by U.S. industry.

The trainers are asked by their instructors--whether company and union officials from Detroit or outside consultants--to apply the often esoteric material to making cars. They are told that, when they train their fellow workers, the lessons must be practical to be effective.

“This is real,” said Bud Corn, a GM instructor from Detroit, who led a class at the Airtel Plaza hotel in Van Nuys with the fervor of a sports coach before the big game. “The question for me is, ‘Does management style affect the quality of an automobile?’ ”

“Damn right,” chimed in one worker.

Warning Issued

Then Mark Fielder, a UAW instructor, warned the class about the pitfalls of teams getting too close. “Like those Watergate guys were so tight, they thought they could get away with anything,” Fielder said.

Some workers are getting a kick out of applying the lessons to everyday life. When the Cobras got lost on the way back from the Mexican restaurant where they had lunch, Tony Lewis, the driver, teased his colleagues about not offering him enough “feedback.”

“Come on guys, we’re not communicating, “ Lewis said, to raucous laughter.

GM officials admit it’s no easy task altering the attitudes of thousands of employees, many of whom remain bitterly opposed to the changes. And some middle-level managers are more than a little nervous about the new system.

“They’re shaking in their boots,” said Darrell Robb, an hourly worker in the process of coordinating the new ergonomics plan for the factory, a task left to management under the existing system. “It’s a real sensitive time.”

But management stands to gain higher productivity if everything works.

‘You Get More Sales’

“With ergonomics, we can take extraneous work off the job, speed up the line and put out a better product,” labor consultant Suzanne H. Rodgers told a class at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City. “With better quality, you get more sales and build more cars.”

To illustrate, Rodgers led the group back to the Van Nuys factory, where she asked her team to explore the assembly line to find jobs that could be done more efficiently. Lucrecia Janke, a GM worker for 13 years, suggested a pocket be placed on the car for inspection tickets.

“Guys end up spending half their time crawling around the car looking for tickets that get thrown all over the place,” Janke said.

Another future trainer, Mario Ortiz, 34, who most recently worked in the metal repair section of the plant’s body shop, pointed out a worker who lifts heavy doors onto an automatic welder. He said he thought a device was needed to reduce the strain on the worker’s back.

But for all the changes involved in team concept, the Cobras know that the most delicate of all is how to explain prospective changes to workers without alienating them.

“They don’t understand what we’re trying to do,” said Bowers. “They think we’re out to become bosses. But we’re just regular guys, like everyone else.”