e The IAM’s Don Kennedy gave a lecture on his union’s HPWO policy.

IAM lecturer gives overview of American-style co-design

For the International Association of Machinists, workplace co-man- agement has been turned into suc- cess in several operations in the United States and Canada. It has been a tough go, but with some strong underlying principles, the IAM claims to have made co-man- agement work for it.

Today, the has just under 1% of its over 500,000 members working under a cooperative management system called HPWO (High Perfor- mance Work Organization) pro- gram. Under the HPWO the union negotiates a partnership agreement with the employer to co-manage the workplace.

On February 24-26 the I.W.A. CANADA held a conference on new workplace management systems where close to 40 union officers and staff from 14 local unions across Canada listened to a presentation by the IAM’s Don Kennedy, Direc- tor of HPWO from the union’s inter- national headquarters in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C.

“The real protection of jobs out there is that you’ve got customers and services that want the products and services that you bring to the marketplace,” said Brother Ken- nedy.

Under the IAM’s HPWO program, the union enters into a co-manage- ment agreement if there is a com- mitment to grow the business and there is a true costing out of all workplace related activities.

One of the other fundamentals is that there must be improved work processes to free up resources to expand and grow.

nnedy said that employers have always looked at costs in dollars per hour per employee (i.e. $60/per hour). These numbers, lump unre- lated costs of the enterprise, onto the backs of employees.

The IAM is getting employers to look at “activity-based costing” costs which consider costs related to spe- cific production activities, rather than aggregate costs.

What they have found out is that union labour has carried the burden of indirect costs (of people not get- ting the product out the door) over

the years.

“Our traditional cost structure rate means we have that burden rate attached to our labour,” said Kennedy.

What the IAM has also found is that it can cost more for the employer to sub-contract work than have work done by the membership. That’s because employers have not had an accurate system of identifying the true costs of doing work in-house.

The IAM has seen a turnaround success story at Harley Davidson in the United States, where the com- pany put in an HPWO workplace strategy in cooperation with the union and where productivity has had to keep pace with orders for 200,000 motorcycles a year. Last year the workers produced 140,000 choppers, which left a backlog of 60,000 orders.

Kennedy said it is never easy to change a workplace process and there truly has to be a joint process where all jobs are continuously eval- uated.

Kennedy said that in the last 10 years the world has become much different. With the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, coun- tries in the word that were not open for business are now open. The IAM itself lost about 150,000 jobs at the end of the Cold War, mostly in the defense industries.

“We don’t have a safe, protected environment in which we work everyday,” he added

“Governments have made deci- sions and, ready or not,-the global market is here and we've got to deal with it.”

In the IAM’s view it is not enough for only the CEO’s to think about globalization — workers need to know what is happening outside the workplace as well

He added that employers must not try to end run the union and that the workforce can benefit by a true partnership arrangement by through job security, improved skills, higher wages and job training.

“Workers have great ideas that can help all sides prosper. That can lead to better purchasing and a bet- ter allocation of resources anda smoother day to day running of oper- ations,” said Kennedy. “There has to be a commitment from the very

top of the oo. If we do it right, everyone will see the value of the process.

Kennedy said that under the HPWO system, discipline of work- ers remains the responsibility of the employer, with the union free to review and grieve that decision.

“That’s one thing the we (the IAM) believe does not change.

When asked if the has been weakened by new co-management systems like the HPWO, Kennedy said no.

HPW0O’s have been introduced in

such companies as Bidet! David-

son, Boeing feyerhaeuser in the United States and Air Canada in this country.

“T can’t think of a single place where we've done this where there has been a decertification,” he said. “Our view is that one of the keys to

artnerships is a strong, indepen- fen union in combination with strong, qualified, visionary manage- ment.

“Our view is that the union gets stronger, not weaker in a partner- ship.”

° National I.W.A. CANADA President Dave Haggard said the union has to take the initiative on partnerships.

Conference discusses views on co-management schemes

“Almost every change that has taken place in our workplaces in the past have been driven by the employer,” said 1.W.A. CANADA National President Dave Haggard, speaking to the participants at the union’s conference on co-manage- ment in the workplace. “And when we talk about workplace change it is usually in the context of downsiz- ing operation or kicking the hell our of us or forcing us to negotiate, as (Local 1-85 President) Larry Rewakowsky has said, ‘with a gun to our head.”

“What we are trying to do (by com- ing up with an I.W.A.- made policy on co-management) is take the ini- tiative and take it away from the employer,” added Haggard. “In some places we have shocked the hell out of employers when we say we want a partnership.”

In 1998 MacBlo forced co-man- agement and co-design work arrangements on several of its coastal operations. So far, due to the diligence of the I.W.A.’s leaders and members, collective agreements have not been tampered with and the first year’s results have been beneficial.

But the I.W.A. still needs its own policy to develop guidelines to assist locals and sub-locals when they are faced with variations of co-manage- ment-type schemes.

“We've told MB that it can’t con- tinue to have a partnership based on only what it wants to doasa company,” said Haggard. “As we told the company, sooner of later, they are going to have to deal with the union as its full partner or it will fail at some time or another.”

“We need to think about ways in which we can cooperate with employ- ers to grow the business,” said Hag- gard. “That doesn’t mean feath- erbedding positions because that will fail too.

“We have to tell employers that we want to be partners when they having tough times and also in the good times when they are making gads of money,” he added.

Third National Vice President David Tones told the conference that “whether they (co-management schemes) are done from a union per- spective jointly or whether they are

lone unilaterally by management — that’s the question — aie time will tell.”

He reminded the local union offi- cers and staffers that many I.W.A. operations already have gainshar- ing, profit sharing or other produc- tivity schemes in place.

Monty Mearns, first vice presi- dent of Local 1-85 said there has been a sense of ownership in his local in the co-management process with MacBlo and that it’s too earl: to tell what the overall effects will be on the long-term good of the mem- bership.

Mearns added that, regardless of what kind of process there is, the benefits to the union and members will depend on how strong the union people are on the committees. He — said that there must be a sense of ownership by both trades and pro- duction workers.

“The next step for the program is to truly give our members more dis- cretionary power and ownership of the program,” he said. “If this is

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