Q. Could you be specific with regard to what results you have found in your efforts with GM concerning productivity, worker satisfaction, and both management and worker desire to continue the programs or to terminate them?
A. I would say that we are not concerned primarily with productivity increases. In fact, however, I think they occur by means of eliminating retarding factors to increasing productivity such as poor quality, which requires more repairs and which represents more scrap, and so on. Let me give you a concrete example.
Back in 1973, we initiated a very small program in one of the assembly plants in GM, where, in the glass installation area, scrap was at a horrible rate, and repairs were at an impossible rate. Half the people in that particular area--only about 30 people as I recall--had suffered some kind of disciplinary measure against them by management in the previous six months; absenteeism was very high, labor turnover was bad. We asked the workers whether they would volunteer to undertake a program. We said, 'Obviously, what's happening here is no damn good.' Fortunately, practically all of the workers volunteered.
We asked them to figure out, among themselves, with a foreman, how they wanted the job done, instead of management telling them how to do it. In a period of seven or eight months scrap was way down, repairs were way down, absenteeism was down, turnover was down, nobody had been disciplined. There was a good feeling among the workers.
Q. Given results like that how do you explain the general union reluctance in this country to even begin the kind of experiments which you have pursued?
A. Union leaders are beginning to change their minds. There's more interest being expressed now; there's a greater willingness to enter into experiments. By and large, union resistance relates to, one, a skepticism about management's goals and purposes--a fear that this is simply a gimmick on the part of the management to take advantage of the workers, and two, a fear that if the workers feel that they have a satisfactory life at work, there will be an erosion of loyalty to the union. I challenge both those arguments.
I think that since the union is a 50-50 partner in the development and implementation of the program, I have no concerns about it being a gimmick. It's for real. Secondly, experience indicates that where the programs are in effect, the workers seem to have a greater loyalty rather than a lesser loyalty, to the union, although I must say, also, that they have a greater respect for the management--as the case should be where the management is treating them as adults.
Too often, QWL is written up as the workers' co-operating with the management to do something for the management. It's quite the contrary. It's the management moving towards the workers and surrendering certain prerogatives which management has historically enjoyed. In every labor contract there is a management rights clause which ways, in effect, that the methods, means and processes of manufacture are solely and exclusively the right of management. It's not easy to get plant managers, superintendents, or foremen to agree to surrender some of those rights to the workers. They are fearful that there will be an erosion of their authority within the plant.
Q. Earlier, you soft-pedalled the question of productivity, emphasizing that QWL programs should be seen as management efforts to help workers improve the quality of their work lives. But it seems that if, indeed, these programs are distasteful to management then the question of productivity may be very important. Increased productivity may be the primary reason that management may be willing to have its prerogatives encroached upon.
A. If as a result of the program the scrap rate is down and the repair rate is down this reduces unit costs. If there is lower absenteeism, so that replacements aren't as necessary, it reduces costs. If labor turnover is reduced, it reduces costs. If there is less discipline taken against employees it reduces costs. If your grievance procedure is working so that your complaints are handled quickly, it reduces costs.
It's obvious that GM is happy with our successful programs because the top-level executives are gung-ho in favor of it.
I might say, there are three basic paths, as I see it, which collective bargaining is following. The normal hard-boiled adversarial collective bargaining which takes place over wages, benefits, working conditions, etc., is going to continue. We'll be in negotiation with GM in July, and we're going to fight like tigers for a good contract. And we may have a strike. Who knows? Simultaneously, there are certain programs that we have to fight very hard to get management to agree to. But once they have agreed, we establish joint, co-operative means of implementing them, like health and safety programs.
But there's a third path and that's what I call the QWL approach. Say you were management and I were the union, and I had a demand to improve the quality of work life. The deadline for a contract is midnight, otherwise there'll be a strike. At two minutes to 12 you say, 'I give up, I'll give you the demand--tell me what you want me to do.' I couldn't tell you, because a QWL program isn't conducive to that kind of collective bargaining process. It has to be built from the ground up, based upon people putting their minds together to do it. QWL programs, joint co-operative programs resulting from hard bargaining, and the adversarial relationship that normally grew between parties in the collective bargaining relationship are following simultaneous paths and I don't see any contradiction. This is what we're doing at GM.