SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET: WORKING INTO THE NEXT CENTURY : MID-CAREER CRUNCH : WORK DEMOCRACY : Shortage of Room at the Top Makes Employee Input, Involvement More Important Than Ever Before

There never has been enough room at the top for all of our educated, ambitious, talented young people, or at least those who think they belong there.

But workplace democracy--efforts to give workers more say in decisions affecting their jobs--is emerging as an important route toward the top for the millions of increasingly well-educated young Americans who may scorn jobs they believe fail to utilize their full potential.

It’s happening in the auto industry, it’s happening in schools, it’s happening in factories big and small. And it’s getting careful attention these days.

Many experts in government, business, academia and unions believe that sharing the power to make major and minor decisions at work can greatly ease the strain caused by the growing number of young people who are able to handle supervisorial jobs without a corresponding increase in the number of such jobs.

Alfred Warren, General Motors’ vice president of labor relations, says the new relationships being developed between workers and managers “have the potential of revolutionizing the way we work everywhere, not just at GM.”

And GM Chairman Roger Smith says the “very survival” of GM depends on the success of the new system that gives workers “a meaningful voice in company management.”

As the ranks of college graduates swell, there is the prospect that there will be a vast increase in the numbers of those frustrated would-be supervisors and company executives.

A question being widely debated is whether young people are being “overeducated.” That was the topic of a major UCLA conference May 6, sponsored by the school’s Institute of Industrial Relations.

Obviously, education is in itself a valuable goal, regardless of the job and income that education helps to obtain. And society may never find a way to fully satisfy all of those who want to be bosses instead of employees. But shared decision-making is seen as a way to at least partly satisfy those workers.

The idea of employees sharing decision-making authority with management isn’t new, of course, but it is spreading rapidly these days. It is happening partly because corporations are seeking ways to become more competitive, and because governments at all levels, under tight budget restraints, are exploring ways to cut costs and perform more efficiently.

But perhaps most important of all in the spread of workplace democracy is, according to experts in employee relations, a growing consensus that young and old alike, at almost all levels of education, want to be treated as adult decision makers, not just order takers.

The federal government has several major programs designed to encourage on-the-job democracy, primarily through the Department of Labor and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.

Full-time staffs at several private, nonprofit organizations such as the Work in America Institute, based in Scarsdale, N.Y., make extensive studies and hold conferences around the country to stimulate interest in the concept.

The best way to understand it, though, is to see or read about the thousands of functioning examples of the new way of working. All of them incorporate some element of workplace democracy, although none include a system that makes all jobs equally ego-gratifying, important and comparably paid.

But advocates of workplace democracy say in many ways it is an effective way to confront the problem of making more room at least closer to the top.

The largest number of jobs affected by the new system are in factories and large offices that often offer low-ranking jobs. These are usually the least attractive to bright young men and women who would probably prefer--and think they can fill--supervisorial or executive jobs.

But if those jobs at or near the top are not available, then workplace democracy is an alternative that can ease the disappointment.

A worker participation system planned jointly by General Motors and leaders and members of the United Auto Workers is an example worth examining because it includes most of the interesting elements of all such systems.

The project is located near Nashville, Tenn., where construction has started on a new GM facility that will be used to build a new car model, the Saturn, which is scheduled to go into production in early 1990.

Worker participation in Saturn management decisions began in 1982, long before any serious decisions were made. Some GM executives thought of the idea and called on the UAW, which represents most of its workers, to help devise what they said should be “the most imaginative plan possible.”

That core group of top GM and UAW officials selected 35 plant managers, supervisors, personnel directors and other corporate representatives and 64 worker representatives, including rank-and-filers and union staffers.

They were told to “throw away the past,” ignore all previous company and union policies and practices and find a way to make employees part of the decision-making process at every level.

The 99 members of the group traveled around America and visited Japan, Sweden and other countries to get ideas. They traveled together as equals.

They did not conclude that income of rank-and-file workers could or even should be the same as corporate executives, although that proposal, too, was briefly considered.

But they did agree that even the basic design of the plant, inside and out, had to be approved by both management and worker representatives.

They also agreed to “minimize the differentiation” between Saturn’s people by having common cafeterias, parking, identification and entrances for managers and workers. There will be no time clocks. All will be paid their salaries at the same time.

Day-care centers are planned for children of workers and supervisors. The cafeterias will be upgraded. Saturn will have gyms for managers and workers alike, according to the plan.

Workers will have a voice in almost every phase of running the Saturn Corp., joining with management representatives to decide everything from the number and design of cars to be built and the number of workers needed to build them, to plant location and advertising programs.

Management retains the final decision-making power if there is a dispute between worker and management representatives. But all the planners agreed that, if the workers’ views are ignored with any frequency, the entire plan will collapse, and management says it is determined to avoid that danger.

To reduce as much as possible the tedium associated with mass production and presumably abhored by well-educated workers, the traditional assembly line will be replaced by “module manufacturing” techniques.

That will mean using small teams of workers with multiple skills to put together entire sections of the cars instead of each worker adding small pieces one at a time as cars move along an assembly line. This is designed to give factory workers the job satisfaction skilled craft workers often have.

Workers’ basic wages will be negotiated by the union and company officials, but the more skills they have, the higher their incomes will be. Workers will get a share of any savings from increased productivity, and their salaries will also be linked to their individual productivity or the productivity of small work teams of 10 to 15 members.

Workers and managers will share responsibility for quality control, and the number of supervisors will be cut as workers assume a larger role in making day-to-day decisions on the plant floor.

A somewhat similar but less extensive worker participation plan is operating successfully in Fremont, Calif., at New United Motors Manufacturing Inc., a joint venture of Toyota and GM. That plant is managed by Toyota. At the GM plant in Van Nuys, there is also a cooperative plan stressing primarily what is called a “team concept.”

Variations of the General Motors system are also being applied in white collar jobs.

For instance, to improve the public schools, teachers in several school districts around the country are sharing decisions equally with principals and school superintendents.

The idea is that more young people will be encouraged to go into teaching if participatory management increases teachers’ status and self-esteem.

In some communities, teachers and principals join with administrators to decide how school funds are to be spent. Together, they evaluate teacher performance, develop curriculum, select textbooks, fix schedules and design special programs for gifted students.

The most notable and successful such program is going on in Miami, Fla., where then-Dade County School Supt. Leonard Britton joined with teachers’ union leaders to design it. Britton is now superintendent of schools in Los Angeles and says he wants to start a similar program here to bring together teachers and administrators.

In some school districts, teachers who agree to remain in the classroom for at least two years can significantly increase their salaries by serving as master teachers.

The idea is that a “career in teaching” program offers teachers a second route to get at least close to the top of a school’s salary structure.