SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : Worker Participation Survives Early Woes
Not long ago, “quality circles,” “team concept” and other forms of worker participation were all the rage.
But efforts to extend the idea nationwide have met with disappointment. While a few such programs flourish, many more have failed. Most U.S. companies haven’t even tried them.
Yet some businesses and labor unions have learned from past mistakes. They’re finding that worker involvement in the decision-making process can lead both to job satisfaction and higher productivity.
That finding is important as American manufacturers struggle against foreign competitors who sometimes produce better quality at lower cost. Experts say that in the future, supervisors at American companies must learn to become teachers, advisers and coordinators rather than authoritarians.
Successful worker participation is already in place at parts of Motorola Inc., Corning Inc., IBM, Ford Motor Co. and Cummins Engine Co., as well as New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), a General Motors-Toyota joint venture in Fremont, Calif.
“I really hated to come to work when it was operated by the old GM management,” said Jo Jo White, a worker in the NUMMI plant. “Now we aren’t pushed around by bosses who don’t give a damn about us. We used to be told everything we had to do. Now we get to help decide.”
Advocates say getting workers involved in decision-making rather than treating them as mere factors of production makes for a happier workplace and a happier bottom line when--and this is crucial--it is fully supported by top management and labor leaders.
A study by the Work in America Institute, a think tank in White Plains, N.Y., found that productivity increased between 25% and 30% in plants that are using extensive worker participation programs, while absenteeism plummeted from as high as 15% down to 2%, on average.
Jerome Rosow, president of the institute, said polls of workers at companies using the programs add more evidence that they appreciate the results.
Only a small fraction of the U.S. work force is involved in a full-blown worker participation program, but the proportion may be increasing; such programs are being encouraged by labor-management experts and the government.
The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor-Management Cooperation has just issued a 750-page loose-leaf book showing managers, unions and workers how to improve teamwork programs.
“Shifting to a team-based work environment takes a lot of time, commitment, training and a new mind-set for all involved,” said Charles Spring, head of the bureau.
Take Douglas Aircraft Co. in Long Beach. In 1989, it launched what it hoped would become a model of workplace democracy. Now the program is just limping along.
Glen Plunkett, a United Auto Workers Local 148 activist, said many workers dislike the program because of how it was implemented by management and the union.
“Some of the union people who were supposed to lead the system sit at their desks with their feet up for eight hours a day,” Plunkett said. “Some put in for overtime pay for mythical overtime hours, and nothing is done to get membership acceptance of the team concept.”
But management is largely at fault, he said, because Douglas is “not committed to the concept, despite all their grandiose proclamations.”
A company spokesman said that, where it is operating, the plan has raised productivity and cut absenteeism. The union officials accused of malingering deny the charge.
GM’s Saturn Corp. in Spring Hill, Tenn., is the great hope for advocates of American workplace participation.
At Saturn, joint decisions are made by teams of five to nine managers and workers about everything from immediate localized problems such as getting replacements for malfunctioning tools to work scheduling and even disciplining workers and managers.
While there are about 100 job classifications in a traditional auto plant, there are only four at Saturn, so jobs are interchangeable and workers perform more than one task. Teams work together to build entire units of the car, such as the engine, substantially reducing the use of the old assembly line.
When an automated production line is used, workers can stop it and fix defects immediately instead of letting a defective car finish the line and then get sent back for repair--if the defect happens to be noticed by a quality control supervisor.
Higher-level teams, coordinating with shop-floor teams, decide questions ranging from car design and plant-wide production schedules to the choice of Saturn dealers. Worker representatives have full access to all the company’s financial records to help them join managers in making decisions.
Most traditional divisions between workers and managers at Saturn have been erased. There are no time clocks or separate dining, parking or fitness facilities, and no one wears ties. Executives still make more money, but 20% of everyone’s income is based on productivity and profitability.
Pete Kelley, president of United Auto Workers Local 160 at a General Motors plant in Warren, Mich., isn’t convinced that the Saturn system will spread through GM. “Can anyone in their right mind really believe GM, the largest and one of the most powerful corporations in the entire world, is honestly going to permit true industrial democracy and allow a classless workplace? Absolutely not!”
But Mike Bennett, president of the UAW local at Saturn, is a believer. He said absenteeism is less than 1%, compared to an 11% average at other GM plants, and that cars are completed the first time with “maybe one defect and usually none.”
Bennett says the system has made being a union leader “10 times more difficult than it was in other plants. Now I cannot just point a finger and blame management when things go wrong, since we decide together how this place should be run.”
But even participation programs that start off with promise can fall apart. Take Rushton Mining Co. in Pennsylvania, one of the first worker participation programs in the United States.
It began in 1969, and both productivity and worker satisfaction increased, according to Paul S. Goodman, a Carnegie-Mellon University professor who studied what was called the Rushton Experiment.
He said it later failed for a variety of reasons, but a critical factor was that the experiment was limited to only one part of the company and wasn’t expanded. Apparently, company officers wanted more and more proof of its effectiveness before adopting it in other divisions.
“The Rushton mine division using the system became an isolated island in the company,” Gordon said. “Other supervisors and workers who didn’t understand it, feared the radical changes taking place in the experiment and began attacking it.
“Those left out of the experiment won, and it was dropped after a few years,” he said.
Another failure was Tektronix Inc., a Beaverton, Ore., computer chip concern that had good results with worker participation in the early 1980s.
“When top managers changed, they turned back the tide,” said William Belgard, a former human resources officer there. “They were not used to anything other than the old top-down, autocratic system, and the new way collapsed.”.
The new officers had no comment.
Even when top executives are fully committed to worker participation, they’re often unaware of the critical role supervisors play in making such systems work. Said Rosow: “The main impact of change falls on supervisors and middle managers.”
So, while workers themselves often get to broaden their jobs and make them more interesting by having increased responsibilities, authority is taken away from supervisors who resent it, see it as a career threat and tend to undermine the system, Rosow said.
To avoid failure, everyone involved must have substantial training in the principles and procedures of the program, Rosow said.
The Hay Group, a management consultant in Philadelphia, recently looked at all forms of worker participation--even the most rudimentary--to see if the idea is really catching on.
The answer is yes, but only in a very limited way in most firms that try it; advanced worker participation is practiced in less than 10% of the nation’s companies.
The survey included employees who just dropped their ideas in a suggestion box, as well as responses to ideas developed through a full-blown, formal worker participation system.
Only 18% of hourly employees said they even had a chance to put their ideas into use; 22% of the clerical workers said their ideas had a chance, and 35% of professional/technical employees said they had a chance of getting management to accept their ideas.
