The Other Side of the Tracks

   A lot has been made recently of the Tracks program and the golden rewards that await us when fully implemented.  However, in practice, programs such as these generally do nothing to insure any kind of job security.
   Deskilling the labor we perform to one process fits all, will allow CAT seamless worker replacement in times of high turnover.   Instead of the current economy-related wage and benefits concessions we do get to retain us, CAT will be able to meet employment fluctuations by hiring anybody off the street and training them according to the guidelines we help them to write with our ideas outlined in variance cards and in discussions with our foreman.   As is usually the case, maximum management flexibility, or control, leads to reducing the employees' bargaining power and subsequently, our livlihoods.
   But, programs such as "Tracks" aren't new.   Process management reaches back to the early part of the twentieth century and the ideas of Frederick Taylor.
   Taylor, disturbed about inefficiency in America, set out to find the "one best way" to do a job.   Essentially what Taylor attempted to do was to take the most experienced and skilled workers in a field and break down every move they made.   After that, he would study the movements and eliminate all non-essential acts, which would allow him to manage the process by reducing skilled work to a series of steps that anybody can perform.   Upon completion the production rate would skyrocket but the wages would only marginally increase because experience and know-how no longer played a role in the process.   All one needed to do now was to follow the prescribed list and the work would be done as well as if it was done by skilled workers.
   That is the "McDonaldization" of jobs.
   The turnover rate at fast food restuarants such as McDonalds and other industries that have a rigidly managed process in place is uniformly high.&Nbsp;  (The heavily unionized auto industry is an exception to this rule.)  However, instead of paying more to hold on to proven reliability and experience, these "McDonaldized" corporations can simply hire somebody and quickly have them functioning as competently as somebody who has been there twenty years because of a superbly managed process that accomodates high turnover.
   Unfortunately for us, with Caterpillar's history of waging war with its workers, it's easy to assume that Caterpillar hopes to achieve further control of its workers with programs such as "Tracks".
   A way to stem this uneasy feeling towards "Tracks" is to provide a long-term guarantee to our jobs.   Secondly, in his book McDonaldization of Society, George Ritzer placed an emphasis on quality circles to allow for worker creativity in the work place.   Job satisfaction, according to Ritzer, tends to wain when a strictly managed process, which stifles individual decision making, is in place.
   Once again though, the corporate America version of the quality circle, management and employees working together to formulate educated management decisions effecting the job process, differs significantly from the Japanese model Ritzer referred to.   (W. Edwards Deming, considered the founder of the philosophy of management-employee cooperative programs said, "It is no longer socially acceptable to dump employees on the heap of the unemployed."   He added that "driving out the fear" that leads to job insecurity is crucial for cooperative programs to work.&nbps;  Things have really changed.)
   Recently the labor-management cooperation model that made Saturn "a different kind of car company" was voted out with about 90% of the vote and replaced with a fairer contract.   "Why are we the ones doing all of the cooperating and capitulating?", was the question being asked by the employees at Saturn.  
With the new contract, a higher base pay was implemented, the worker to union rep ratio was lowered from 560-1 to 319-1, and language for better rights for injured workers was implemented.
   The idea of bringing workers into the management decision process also betrayed AT&T workers who found that the "Workplace of the Future" was not at AT&T for many of them.
   Labor-management cooperation was at the helm of this program as well.   Inevitably, as labor journalist Kim Moody pointed out, these kind of cooperative ventures "are meant to grease the wheels of corporate reorganization directed at profitability, not job security."   The result of the AT&T cooperative model proved her point.   Sixty-thousand workers were laid off in the the four year "Workplace of the Future" era.
   It looks like a pretty bleak future if we agree to cooperate without receiving in return contracted job security and wage guarantees.   Afterall, if our knowledge and skill are so important to the success of "Tracks", we should use it to receive concessions that can help us in the long-term.
   How long can the integrity of American companies remain intact when they continually sucker punch their employees' good-faith cooperative efforts to streamline the process, which, when proven viable, are then used to inflate profits at the expense of the jobs of those same employees?
   To Caterpillar's credit, all the words it uses are right.   Cat said in its initial "Tracks" meeting that more business will lead to greater job security.   (I can't recall them saying anything about more pay with the more business though.)  
   Let's challenge Cat to put that in writing. How about guaranteeing, in writing, long-term job security with this increased profitability.
   The one thing I've learned here is, all the right words aren't worth squat if they are not in writing.

READ MORE ABOUT IT:
The McDonaldization of Society by George Ritzer
Numerous articles about the recent Saturn contract are on the Web.
January and February editions of Labor Notes
To read more about Deming: http://deming.org/ (don't agree with everything but if businesses lived up to his theory, our situation would be better)

SOLIDARITY