Consider this scenario. The new plant starts off with a bang, but the boss who put everything into shape moves on. Then a union election brings forward a bunch of new faces and philosophies of dealing with management. Finally the plant gets a new generation of high-tech equipment.
So what happens? Personnel problems. Technology mishaps. Production takes a dive and stays there.
This has not been so, however, at Miller Brewing Co.’s plant in Trenton, Ohio. Indeed, the southern Ohio plant has been quite a success in the eyes of the Work in America Institute Inc., a non-profit research organization in Scarsdale, N.Y., that fosters employee involvement efforts.
“It has one of the most successful labor/management partnerships that we have seen,” said Marty Cohen, a Work in America Institute vice president.
The plant’s birth was not very promising, however. It opened in 1981, but soon after was mothballed because of slumping sales. It reopened in 1991 with a high production system and extensive partnership between the plant’s managers, local United Auto Workers union officials and workers.
Not only has the plant regularly exceeded productivity levels of most breweries, but it has managed to keep it up, Cohen said. Besides loosely written agreements that let workers and managers resolve problems, the plant has a number of so-called star teams.
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The teams do the work supervisors once did, and team members concentrate on different areas: personnel, safety, quality, administration, maintenance, continuous management. The team members, workers and bosses, also rotate assignments. Many plants have similar set-ups, “but they (Miller-Trenton) are one of the best at this,” Cohen said.
Uneven bounty: This is a miracle economy for workers, right?
Not so, say a number of female workers surveyed nationwide by the AFL-CIO. Indeed, most female workers in the recent survey said that making ends meet has become tougher for them in the last five years.
Among female workers in Illinois, more than 9 out of 10 said that earning equal pay is very important to them. Forty-four percent said that their job security has been getting worse. Only 5 percent of the women said child-care is available at their job.
Along with a poll conducted by telephone, the surveys were handed out at work sites, grocery stores, beauty parlors, soccer games, prayer breakfasts and other places.
One of the survey’s more surprising results, said Margaret Blackshere, secretary-treasurer of the Illinois AFL-CIO, was the low priority female black workers gave to job discrimination issues.
Intrigued by the response, Blackshere talked with black workers. Many said low pay and other work difficulties are larger concerns.
Stalled organizing: Before the Teamsters union’s victory over United Parcel Service of America Inc. becomes the theme song for newly resurgent labor, it is worth noting what happened to the UAW’s organizing drive at Nissan Motor Manufacturing Co.’s plant in Smyrna, Tenn.
After a brief, intense effort, the union couldn’t muster enough supporters and decided last week to call off the drive at the 5,000-worker plant. It’s the second failed effort at the plant; another flopped in 1989, when the union could only garner 30 percent support.
Although the company quickly and publicly proclaimed its victory, union officials downplayed the results, privately saying it was not an all-out, make-or-break confrontation. Rather, they say, the drive got started when word got out that the union was closing its local office in Smyrna.
Still, the defeat is a reminder of the difficulties unions face in organizing high-paying blue-collar jobs.
It also is a measure of the UAW’s failure to secure a toehold among foreign automakers: It has yet to sign up members at a foreign-owned auto plant not linked to a U.S. partner. The setback in Smyrna may have implications for the union’s ability to organize at two plants it has had its eye on–BMW’s Spartanburg, S.C., plant and the Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
“These transplants are not bringing in a foreign labor philosophy. They are playing U.S.-style hardball,” said Dan Cornfield, a labor expert and sociology professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
One of the problems unions still face in the South, Cornfield added, is many workers’ lack of familiarity with them.
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