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In an aluminum fabrication shop, management returned revved-up from a course on Demand Flow technology at the Worldwide Flow College. Before long they had applied what they learned. Jobs which used to be based in departments and engaged in entire assemblies were broken down into more segmented and repetitive tasks in a large flow line cell. As the textbook -- Quantum Leap -- indicates: "Group Technology also provides the opportunity to use flexible operators for multiple machines facilitating such efficiencies as an operator performing set-up on one machine while another machine is running. "
In a flight kitchen there is a program to reduce lead time, increase throughput and get rid of non-value added work. The company calls it TCT for Total Cycle Time; it's corporate wide and it comes by way of some Dallas based consultant. In a quick blitz management reorganized the workplace. It took out the conveyor belts because they were too slow. At each station is posted a work process sheet that shows the layout of your supplies. The process must be followed. It re-arranged work stations to get rid of walk time, moved jobs around, changed the flow of material and moved people out of areas. As part of the process, management has targeted in-station time. It has started to time the jobs. How much work can people do? Right now it's 500 salads an hour.
The company is known for railroading programs. It's already had the usual ones like TQM, but now the driver is an internal 'shortline' railway. The company reports that an internal shortline will "develop new work methods leading to increased productivity and efficiency". Amongst other things the company wants to change "labour relations, pay structure, workplace innovations, labour force/work rules and employee participation/communications. " It wants to "incubate new work methods -- including team work, flexible work assignments, high involvement management and employee empowerment" and it wants to develop "alternative compensation systems". The company believes it can accomplish a great deal with its internal shortline but does admit that there might be little to "offset the problems created by low pay and demanding workloads."
At a company which makes commercial heat exchangers, management following the lead of the U.S. head office distributed a glossy booklet called New Work Habits For A Radically Changing World. At a special meeting of the workforce the company indicated that it expected everyone to read the booklet and individually to sign it and an accompanying document titled 'Guidelines to Just Conduct'.
New Work Habits speaks to the growth of an evangelical managerial populism. An appropriate subtitle would be "when your boss asks -- just say yes". It is chock full of quips like "expect your boss to expect more from you".
What is happening in our workplaces -- whether it is Lean production, JIT processes, re-engineered organizations, reinvented government or TQM -- is a reflection of broader political - economic developments.
What we see in broader social terms - undermining our social wage, cutting actual wages, a declining standard of living, and the loss of universal rights and entitlements and a weakening of progressive organizations is reflected in our workplaces by insecure employment, contingent pay, flexible workers, intensified work, and efforts to weaken and compromise unions.
It may be stating the obvious, but how can workplaces be dramatically different than the context in which they function? And yet - when it comes to workplace restructuring - that is precisely what we are asked to believe. In fact, there is an army of consultants, academics, and government bureaucrats who are cheerleading managerial efforts to create the so-called new workplace. And it is seen as something decidedly different and better than what we had before.
We are being told - by that same gang of consultants, academics and government bureaucrats - that in lean production, there is a win-win situation. Employers get productivity, efficiency and flexibility and we, as workers, get more satisfying work and more democratic workplaces.
The win-win approach to workplace change characterizes us as highly skilled problem solvers working with more responsibility and authority, less supervision in an empowered and involved work environment. Our experience is different. The changes which are taking place are not providing workers with more training. They are not increasing general skill levels. They are not giving workers more control over our jobs. They are not creating more interesting work. They are not improving the quality of work life.
Instead, in the closing years of this century, our jobs are actually getting worse. In workplaces where we deal with the public the managerial claim of 'world class' service and customer care confronts the reality of cutbacks, line-ups, dissatisfied customers, angry clients, under-staffing, rigid policies, arbitrary management and more and more work. In workplaces where we make, or service, or prepare products the demands are relentless - more and more, faster and faster. And whatever was the potential of new technology to assist us, it has been subverted by management's restructuring and ends with more pressure and fewer jobs. Regardless of how much our workplaces change, the risk is we'll have early 20th century jobs in 21st century workplaces.
There are two related managerial approaches to workplace change. The first involves a full-scale Lean restructuring. The second, a more piecemeal but more targeted approach, uses benchmarking studies and what has been called 'Best Practice'.
Benchmarking studies can compare either single or multiple aspects of the workplace and they can compare operations either within the same sector or they can cut across boundaries. Benchmarking provides concrete and detailed information about how one operation stacks up against other operations anywhere in the world. Those aspects of a corporation's current performance that can be measured are compared to what is defined as the best competitive measure. If someone, somewhere does it cheaper, quicker, faster then Benchmarking says let's do it the same way here.
Benchmarking and Best Practice encourage employers and require workforces to accept radical changes in work practices in order to reach 'world class' performance.
The problem with benchmarking is that it ignores one side of the workplace equation -- the wellbeing of those involved in the operations. Benchmarks, which can only be achieved through practices which undermine safety or which lead to a deterioration in working conditions, are of no value. The problem is that working conditions are not addressed in benchmarking studies, nor are tradeoffs between working conditions and company performance.
What part of each day do you work in physically awkward positions?
Could you work at the pace of your current job until age 60?
Over the last two years, was it easy for you to get time off to attend to personal needs such as a doctor's appointment, an ill child or a wedding?
Over the last two years, has management tightened up its policy in cases where you might be late or absent from work?
Can you normally leave your work station to go to the washroom without having someone else take over your job?
In the last month, how tense and wound up were you at work?
In both studies our members reported similar results: They are insecure. Too many report that they are working in awkward positions and in pain for much of the time. They are working too fast and too hard with not enough time or not enough people to do the work. They are tired and tense. They often have little energy for their families. And they doubt whether they can keep the pace of their work until they are 60 never mind 65.
These are not developments in corporate hard times. This is the shape of work in corporate good times. These are working conditions at a time when productivity and profit numbers are up, when inflation is low, when the Canadian dollar is favourable, when exports are growing, when corporate taxes are moderate and governments are slashing spending and cutting deficits.
And yet these are the times when too many workers are pushed day after day beyond their reasonable limits.
At GM, Oshawa Assembly you're allowed .02 minutes to position a part that weighs up to 5 pounds within a 3 foot span. This works out to 1.2 seconds. At Ford Assembly you get 7 MODs or .9 seconds to pick up a washer with your right hand and juggle it into your palm. At Chrysler you get 30 TMUs or 1.2 seconds to take two steps. In the flight kitchen you are expected to arrange 500 salads an hour. In an engine plant, engines pass you 1500 times a day. On the trains one attendant used to provide food and beverage to about 108 people. Now the standard has tightened and one attendant is now responsible for anywhere from 144 to 180 passengers. In a cut and sew operation the quotas are posted by the hour up until the last hour when they are switched to 15 minute segments to be sure that in the last fifteen minutes of the day you produce as fast as in the first fifteen minutes. In housekeeping operations, you are allowed 3.83 minutes to clean a commode. You get 12.60 minutes to clean, disinfect, remove the trash and replace supplies in a 150 square foot patient's room.
In the closing years of the last century management began developing time standards to control the pace and rhythm of work and to increase workers' output. In the closing years of this century they are still at it. In the intervening years they have developed hundreds of different systems, mountains of data and time values for basic motions and sophisticated computer software to calculate micromotion times. In different periods management has aggressively tried to redefine a 'fair day's work'. We are in such a period now. And in each period management has added a new arrow to its quiver. First there were time studies and then motion studies and then method studies and now value studies -- each designed to improve labour performance. Before there was the stopwatch, then predetermined time standards and now computer simulations to design and speed-up our jobs.
From the early days of our union there has been an ongoing struggle with management over what constitutes a fair day's effort. In the late thirties workers organized, in large part, to respond to unfair production rates and speed-up. In the fifties and again in the sixties, as management introduced new equipment and production techniques, the union developed expertise in time study and negotiated collective agreement language to limit production standards and work load. As well, there were other, more informal ways of protecting workers against unreasonable speed-up. Out of these efforts came concepts like 'normal time', 'fair and reasonable standards' and the 'average operator'. But now these norms are interpreted as too low. The notion of 100%, once seen as the final goal, is now interpreted merely as a gradation on a scale to be surpassed.
Management is again changing methods and intensifying our work. Where we used to work at one machine, now it's two or three machines. Where there used to be 8 of us now there are only 7 or 6 or maybe fewer of us. Jobs which were already hard enough are now harder.
Management is driving us too hard. Whether it is short-staffing, multiple tasks, electronic measurement, inadequate relief coverage, excessive hours or more and faster work, our bodies and our dignity simply can't take it.
In the past we responded to changes in work methods and work load. Today we do so again. The specifics will be different but it is what we always do. First, we have to use what rights we have, whether it is collective agreement language or legislation.
Second, we have to improve our rights and we have to develop new tactics to fight speed-up.
Bargaining Agenda
1. A Comfortable Pace
The pace of work must be fair and reasonable and our workload accomplished with normal effort.
There may be no clear technical answer to what is fair and reasonable but if we work in pain, if we're feeling overloaded, if we can't keep up, there is a problem with our workload.
We need language on production standards which takes into account:
2. Speed-up
Management is intent on making us work harder and faster. In fact most 'continuous improvement' type programs have as their goal - more work with fewer workers. We must fight for collective agreement provisions which limit employers' rights to speed up our work.
3. Workload reps
There is a renewed managerial enthusiasm for work method and time systems. Today computerized time systems are being used to calculate job elements, times and even ergonomic factors. These systems are being used to tighten up our jobs. We need collective agreement provisions which provide for:
4. Relief staff
We need guarantees that workers who are away from work are always replaced. Short staffing is unacceptable.
5. Electronic Surveillance
New technologies provide management more immediate information about work processes. These developments, whether computers, management information systems or video taping, should not be used to monitor workers or measure individual performance. We need language that limits the use of intrusive technologies and limits what management can do with the information collected.
6. Recovery time
We need more recovery time to be built into every work cycle or job repetition. Jobs are getting tighter. Any recovery time that was in the job is now being turned into work activity. Contrary to what management believes there is not a 60-second work effort in every minute. We need language that limits the extent to which jobs can be loaded. There has to be time within the work cycle for us to recover and get ready for the next operation. These pauses or micro-breaks are necessary for our physical and mental well-being.
7. Rest and break time:
We need more time for breaks during our shifts. Rest time varies by industry and type of work but there is even considerable difference within the same sector. In the auto industry, for example, rest time in our collective agreements varies from 30 minutes to 56 minutes (excluding lunch); that is a range from under 4 minutes an hour to 7 minutes an hour. Across our union the range is even greater with some workplaces still having less than two 10 minute breaks, during the entire shift. In responding to speed-up we need to argue for more rest time away from the job. This can take a number of forms:
8. Overtime
We must fight excessive overtime hours. Voluntary overtime must be guaranteed. No employer should be allowed to force workers to work overtime.
Speed up problems are made worse if we have too little time to recover. We need sufficient rest. We need recovery time within our job cycles, our work day and our lives.
9. Vacation
We need to ensure vacations are guaranteed. And we need to take our vacations. No employer should be able to persuade workers to take money without taking time off.
10. Shorter work time
We need to work less hours in our lives. Shorter work time can be achieved in a variety of ways: increasing vacation entitlement and making it mandatory, personal days off, long weekends, two weeks training for every worker, fewer hours in the week, and early retirement.
11. More Control Over Work Time
Employers ability to define work-time flexibility must be limited. Situations of enforced part-time hours, the introduction of split-shifts and other one-sided flexible hour arrangements, the demands for shift-patterns which only favour management and increasingly irregular and changing work schedules need to be resisted. We need more control over our working times.
12. Ergonomics
Ergonomics means changing the equipment, work station, workplace and work organization such as the speed of work to meet workers' needs.
We need provisions in collective agreements which provide:
More of us are getting hurt at work and there are fewer opportunities for light duty work. We must be guaranteed modified work for as long as we need it. If we are injured it isn't acceptable for the employer to place us in someone else's job particularly if they have more seniority. Instead our job must be modified to accommodate our disability and prevent new disabilities. And we need to negotiate limits to management's ability to get rid of preferred and lighter duty jobs.
Training & Technology
Another wave of Technological Change is cresting. Since the early 80's we have had to respond to distinct periods of technological change and to different corporate strategies as part of them. In the first period - that of computer automation - management used technology to restructure our workplaces.
Employers introduced computers, installed robots, developed electronic M.I. systems, and tried to move to full-scale automation (Computer Integrated Manufacturing, the 'paperless' office etc.). It was a technology leading strategy. It left our workplaces technologically more complex, operations technically more sophisticated and it led to technological job displacement. Management made some clear gains, but not what they had hoped.
From the mid-eighties employers moved to a technology-lagging strategy. The goals shifted. In the earlier period management's overly optimistic engineering expectations came up against real technical shortcomings, (unreliable equipment, limited software, inadequate information processing, lack of compatibility). Inappropriate product-design (not designed for automated processes and too many non-standard components) and a production process that was complex and unpredictable. Management learned that it couldn't automate what it didn't know or couldn't control.
In the technology lagging period management has emphasized work reorganization. It started to simplify and control production and there have been significant changes to the process, layouts, production design and our jobs. In this period there has also been a particular approach to technology - what has been called autonomation as distinct from automation. In autonomation there is a gradual automation strategy built around:
In this period management developed lean equipment - flexible, lightweight, quick corrects, inexpensive, easy to install, easy to maintain and easy to move.
As we are responding to the fallout of Lean Production - work intensification and managerial flexibility - we see on the horizon the outlines of a new technology-leading round. Management has already coined the phrase - Agile Manufacturing - to define it. It takes lean production as its base, and adds a new round of technology and corporate restructuring to the mix. Management has concentrated on product redesign and work reorganization. In the interim many of the technological shortcomings which limited managerial efforts in the past have or soon will be overcome. Technology will, in this period, become a managerial enabler.
Management is also talking about a new type of enterprise - what it calls the virtual corporation, where production takes the form of a set of flexible and changing corporate partnerships. As some describe it: "For as long as the market opportunity lasts, the virtual company continues in existence; when the opportunity passes, the company turns to other projects."
This period, coming hard on the heels of the current one, means more problems for workers. The issues of work organization overlayed with those of rapid technological change and corporate restructuring threatens job security, and it changes the skills and content of our job, how we work and where we work (teleworking) and ultimately what kind of society we will have.
Given the forces of production and the legal framework of production relations it is difficult for unions to be more than reactive. But we must look ahead and build now for what's coming. We need stronger collective agreement language on technology built on the right to know and the right to negotiate.
Despite the rhetoric which surrounds training there is actually very little going on. Companies are interested in company-controlled training programs aimed at changing attitudes and shaping behaviours which facilitate work reorganization (communication skills, working in teams) and which support structured problem solving and continuous improvement. What the workers consider good training, little is being provided in terms of basic skills, opportunities for academic upgrading, technical training, critical thinking and personal development is not provided.
Our goal is to change the extent of training (there is not enough), the distribution of training (it is uneven and available to the selected few) and the content of the training (it is company defined). This requires a more active union role in workplace training issues, a role that is built around:
Deregulation, privatization and free trade - the corporate themes which have been dominating are lives - are particularly troublesome in the health and safety, workers' compensation and environmental areas.
Over the past four years, in the Provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia as well as in the federal jurisdiction there have been major initiatives under way to improve health and safety regulations. Our union has actively participated in all of them. While a number of progressive proposals have been put forward, some even as far as the public hearing stage, we are having increasing difficulty getting them passed into law.
The strong deregulation agenda has derailed, for the time being at least, the B.C. Draft Ergonomics Regulation as well as a whole host of other draft regulations; the Ontario Generic Health Regulation; and the improvements to Canada Labour Code Part 2. Nova Scotia has developed a new health and safety law and a variety of excellent new regulations including violence and indoor air quality but the government has not yet seen fit to bring them into law. We hope because of the interest in health and safety by the Westray Inquiry that there will be sufficient public pressure to see these new laws come into effect.
In occupational health and safety, workers have three basic rights: to participate in workplace health and safety committees; to know about workplace hazards, especially chemical hazards; and to refuse hazardous work. In the context of deregulation, all of these issues are under attack.
The Harris government in Ontario has been lobbied heavily by the organized employers such as the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association to make joint health and safety committees optional and erode the right to refuse. The right to know and the right to training have been seriously threatened by the erosion of health and safety committee certification requirements.
Governments, regardless of which party is in power, are acting as though the provisions of Bill C-62 are already passed. Bill C-62 is the proposed federal Regulatory Efficiency Act which would allow employers to make deals with the government to avoid complying with regulations. Bill C-62 applies to the federal jurisdiction but it also can be applied provincially. So far, the environmental movement and the labour movement have been successful in seeing the proposal stalled but we must remain vigilant to ensure it is not passed into law.
Why is it that when an NDP government gets elected, its progressive agenda immediately gets put on the back burner with "consultation" with everyone allowing the employers to lobby vigorously and successfully to at a minimum retard a progressive agenda and at worst see their agenda implemented. By contrast, why is it that when a right wing government gets elected, they immediately and vigorously implement their agenda of cutbacks?
Governments are contracting activities to the private sector and to employers themselves. Alberta, Ontario and the federal government say they are trying to "get out of the government business" in health and safety. Due to a vigorous fightback by the labour movement, the Ontario government has shelved, for the time being at least, the layoff notices for health and safety inspectors but those retiring are not being replaced.
The biggest privatization push is coming in workers' compensation. Workers' compensation has been a state run plan in Canada since 1914. In most of the United States, however, workers' compensation is privatized. The biggest U.S. workers' compensation carrier, Liberty Mutual, ran its own "Royal Commission", meeting with provincial WCBs and employers coast to coast. Its five volume report "Unfolding Change" places privatization squarely on the Canadian WCB agenda. Liberty Mutual bought Ontario's Blue Cross and more than two dozen rehabilitation clinics precisely to position themselves to take over workers' compensation. The reductions in benefit levels in now a majority of provinces, and the introduction of a waiting period in three provinces goes some distance to harmonizing the workers' compensation benefit levels with private sickness and accident plans.
You would not think that free trade would have a direct effect on the injury rate in Canada but it has. If you look at the escalation in the incidence of RSIs (repetitive strain injuries) among workers in general and our members in particular, you can see a dramatic rise since 1989, the year free trade was introduced. Using the excuse of globalization and the need for competitiveness, employers have sped up the pace of work and the result has been an increase in disabling injuries, especially RSIs.
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