At some point all union leaders are faced with a proposal or announcement from management that they will be implementing a “new system” at the workplace. This “system” might be one of any listed above or have a totally different name. Whenever and however this announcement comes, it means that the Union must put on its thinking cap and be ready to get the members involved.

What does management really want?

This is one of the key questions the union must figure out.

In the case of “for profit” employers it is always safest to assume that management wants to increase profits. There are many ways for them to do this, but it usually involves having workers work harder and producing more with fewer people.

In the case of “non-profit” employers it is safe to assume that they want to make themselves look better (and maybe get themselves a pay raise) by having fewer employees doing more work.

If the union starts with these basic assumptions, then it is easier to figure out the actual details of how these “new systems” will work.

In some rare cases the employer doesn’t want to implement these programs but is being forced to by larger customer. Some companies will insist that their suppliers all institute ISO 9000 (or ISO 14000 etc.) or have workplace teams. Part of the job of the union is to figure out if the boss really wants to implement these programs or are they just “window dressing” for their customers. Figuring out the answer to this question will help the union decide its strategy.

Two kinds of employer schemes

One type strives to get the workers, with or without the union, to act in groups to help management improve productivity. These are sort of brainwashing sessions. They strive to get workers to think like a boss and to come up with ideas on how to cut other workers, speed-up production and ways to do more work. Quality Circles, Team Concept, Kaizan, fit into this category. These schemes also try to undermine the union by setting up non-union committees that will “make decisions for the workers.”

A second employer scheme is usually tied to changes in how production or the work is organized. This could be Cell Manufacturing, Just in Time, Direct Flow Technology, Pay for Knowledge etc. These changes can have a direct effect on parts of the contract. Seniority, layoff and recall procedures, pay grades, transfers, all can be affected. This also gives the union some power, because in most cases the employer cannot make changes to the contract without the union membership’s approval.

In non-profit workplaces this might take the form of setting limits on how long workers can talk to their clients, or setting standardized goals that must be met regardless of the individual situation. In one welfare office this “new system” meant workers could only talk to a client for 2 minutes on the phone, meet with them for 10 minutes, and no client could be kept waiting more then 11 minutes. They had to meet with 6 clients per hour.

Of course many of these employer schemes combine elements of both systems.

Where do these programs come from?

Most of these programs are based upon the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor, who is credited with developing “scientific management.”

Taylor started life as an apprentice machinist in 1874 at a small machine shop in Philadelphia. He then went to work in at the Midvale Steel Works in PA. He became a pattern maker, then leadman, foreman and a then an engineer. In his role as an engineer for Midvale Steel and then for Bethlehem Steel Co., he developed his system of workplace engineering that he called “scientific management.” To most workers his system became known as “Taylorism.” In 1895 he presented his first paper to the American Society of Engineers called “A Piece Rate System.” This was followed with “Shop Management” in 1903 and “The Principles of Scientific Management” in 1911.

His studies and theories in various forms became the guiding light for the development of manufacturing in the United States and continue to influence much of managements’ philosophy.

Taylor’s philosophy and system rested on several ideas:

• If workers had unions that was OK, but the unions and workers had to be convinced that their goals and management’s goals were the same; a successful company meant successful workers. He said that union members that felt the boss was their enemy were misguided. Taylor felt that increasing production would lead to more, not fewer workers.
• Workers naturally work slower than they are capable of working, some because they are lazy and most because they believe this will save jobs.

“When the same workman returns to work on the following day, instead of using every effort to turn out the largest possible amount of work, in a majority of the cases this man deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can-to turn out far less work than he is well able to do-in many instances to do not more than one-third to one-half of a proper days work.

• Management could & must “scientifically” study work in order to determine what workers actually could produce, in order to make them produce the maximum amount. Taylor time-studied and compiled statistics on thousands of workers movements thus beginning “pre-determined time study.” By breaking a worker’s every motion down into basic elements, Taylor could figure out how much a worker could actually produce.
• Management, i.e. engineers, must learn and plan jobs, not the workers. As a skilled machinist Taylor knew that the workers knew more than management. He said that management must take back this knowledge.

“The managers assume for instance, the burden of gathering together all of the traditional knowledge which in the past has been possessed by the workmen and then of classifying, tabulating, and reducing this knowledge to rules, laws, and formulae which are immensely helpful to the workmen in doing their daily work.”

• Incentive and piecework systems were needed in order to get workers to stop “soldiering” and produce to the maximum potential. Taylor recommended a 30 percent bonus for most jobs but up to a hundred per cent bonus for very skilled or very demanding jobs. Taylor, anticipating what he knew would happen, said management was foolish if they cut piece rates after workers began producing more, but we all know that is what management always does.

The basics of Taylorism remain intact today, even in all the so-called new labor-management cooperation programs, worker empowerment programs, cell manufacturing etc.

• Take away the workers’ independent knowledge of production. This is done with computer controlled machines, statistical process control (SPC) programs, and regular time studies. As much as some bosses talk about “empowering workers to make decisions” it is always done in the context of management knowing and planning exactly how production is to be done.
• Convincing workers that their interests are the same as the bosses. Team concept, quality circles are just modern variations of what Taylor said was needed.

Incentive systems to make workers produce to the maximum have been replaced in many places by the “incentive” of work hard or we will move the business overseas.

They Promise us the World

Many of these employer schemes promise the world, but in a very vague way. Do they really mean that workers will finally be listened to? Will the workers actually run the workplace? Will quality really be improved and will junk never again be shipped out? Will job security be really guaranteed? Or will these new systems usher in more layoffs, speed-up, job cuts, and job de-skilling?

• 
• The above article is used with permission and grateful appreciation from the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)
  www.ueunion.org 

All current MOUs are now posted under the 304 Resources tab as per the request of the membership. Consult your Steward if you have any questions.

With one of the oldest demographics in any industry, power generation and electrical transmission workers are finally turning the corner to bring in younger workers to become the next generation of power plant operators and transmission and distribution lines technicians.

The Utility Workers Union of America established  Power 4  America as an educational trust to train new employees to take their place among one of this country’s most professional and well trained groups of workers in the United States.

Consumers Energy has just reached a historic agreement with the UWUA to take over the training on all their employees. It’s a case of people who already work in the industry taking the responsibility of passing on their knowledge and experience to keep America’s electrical infrastructure safe and reliable.

P4A doesn’t only focus on existing technologies, but is also training those power industry students about evolving and future “Green” technologies, responding to the trends that affect the America’s energy mix.

Another route utility companies are using to augment their dwindling workforces is cooperative partnerships they have formed with local colleges, like the PSI Program (or Power Plant Technology) available at Fairmont State College’s  Pierpont Technical Institute (click for a full description,  course outline, and cost).

According to a recent article in The State Journal, PSI graduates are finding work in the industry (click link to read). UWUA Local 304 can attest to this by the graduates that have joined us at Harrison Power Station. These new employees an important and welcomed addition to our plant, and our union.

It’s incumbent of every 304 member to help these employees in any way possible as they learn the equipment and the job of running a power plant. It’s equally important that we pass on the legacy of labor and explain their part in the struggle to keep wages, benefits, and working conditions that respects and acknowledges the talent all Utility Workers bring too the industry.

UWUA Local 304 welcomes our newest employees to Harrison! Now, let’s get to work!

America’s electorate is as diverse and fragmented as almost any time in our nation’s history.  There are groups divided by race, ethnicity, sexual preference, culture, education, differences in views on abortion, gun rights and responsibilities, and many other issues. Divide and conquer is nothing new, but never has it been so writ large across our country’s landscape.

Fueling these divisions is an underlying, yet powerful, amount of anger and frustration. This manifests itself in ugly feelings of intolerance, bigotry, class rivalry, and racism on display across our country. There are even those begrudging their fellow citizens of their constitutionally protected First Amendment Right to free speech with counter-protests and violence.

America’s institutions are under attack like never before, as the social safety net gets thinner and weaker all the time. We’ve been told we can’t trust the Federal Bureau of Investigation,  we’ve seen local law enforcement constantly being ridiculed and scrutinized in nationally publicized tragedies that get little right except the victims names and age. The housing crisis told us we can’t trust banks, and the most recent recession proved that Wall Street isn’t trustworthy either.  Our teachers have quietly weathered the erosion and dismantlement of the public school system without pay raises and even cuts in their pension and retirement as the same spiraling healthcare costs eats away at the little job security they once enjoyed.

The American Dream of getting rich quick was replaced by an economic model of suffering thirty to forty years of penal servitude, under incompetent managers and petty bosses who are too stupid to realize that they too are caught in the same trap as yourself.  All of this was worth it because the light at the end of the tunnel was a pension and retirement.

Here we are, almost thirty years later, and we still have the same incompetent bosses and petty game playing managers but what’s gone is the sense of security and that brass ring of retiring comfortably and with dignity.

Those American households that are lucky enough to have both a father and mother still have both parents working while teachers raise their kids, with no authority or mandate, and TV and video games fill up the time at home.

Unions are especially sensitive to these effects. While union workers are regularly stereotyped as lazy and ungrateful, the real truth is that union members are better informed and painfully aware of the precarious situation facing workers. Union members are usually more well versed on WHY and HOW unions came to be, and the REAL and often bloody sacrifices that workers paid to form them.  They speak out because they can, confident in the union to protect their rights. They speak out for ALL workers. They set the bar.

There’s no doubt that this is why the labor movement is a prime target of those destroying the middle class .

The same ones pushing “Right To Work” and trying to cripple and dismantle the National Labor Relations Board and weaken, or even get rid of the National Labor Relations Act have weaponized  the anxiety and fears  of working people and are using it to further the agenda of making corporations stronger and governmental oversight and regulation weaker.

It’s an easy thing to churn out propaganda under covert 501(C) groups with secret donor lists, buy politicians, fund massive campaigns, and hire slick talking heads and time for them on the airwaves, and wrap themselves patriotically in the flag or hide behind the Holy Bible; whatever it takes to fan the flames of people’s prejudices,; whatever it takes to direct the anger of workers to each other instead of the architects of chaos.

The hard truth is that anybody who works for a living has more in common with each other than they do with pampered corrupt politicians, the very rich, or the lawyers and P.R. people they have working for them, yet many choose to forgo the power that unified action gives them by being distracted by those feeding and manipulating their fears for their own advantage.

Solidarity seems an archaic, even foreign, word. It should, since unions have a long history and are worldwide. There are some countries that being a union organizer is more dangerous than being a militant or a drug trafficker. Organizers and union officers are regularly harassed and even executed in many societies across the globe, just like they were in our country over 90 years ago.

It has taken that long for working people to forget or take for granted what organized labor is doing or has done for them. That opened the door for the unscrupulous profiteers to do some organizing, having learned the lessons of the battles between themselves and labor.

This isn’t a liberal versus conservative thing, or a Republicans against the Democrats contest; it’s not  even an older generation versus generation “X” or “Y” conflict, or native born versus immigrant. This is an American thing!

So be angry, speak out, stand up, but most of all remember what it is that makes us Americans.

You’ve been fired. According to your employer’s data, your facial expressions showed you were insubordinate and not trustworthy. You also move your hands at a rate that is considered substandard. Other companies you may want to work for could receive this data, making it difficult for you to find other work in this field.

That may sound like a scenario straight out of a George Orwell novel, but it’s the future many American workers could soon be facing.

In early February, media outlets reported that Amazon had received a patent for ultrasonic wristbands that could track the movement of warehouse workers’ hands during their shifts. If workers’ hands began moving in the wrong direction, the wristband would buzz, issuing an electronic corrective. If employed, this technology could easily be used to further surveil employees who already work under intense supervision.

Whole Foods, which is now owned by Amazon, recently instituted a complex and punitive inventory system where employees are graded based on everything from how quickly and effectively they stock shelves to how they report theft. The system is so harsh it reportedly causes employees enough stress to bring them to tears on a regular basis.

UPS drivers, who often operate individually on the road, are now becoming increasingly surveilled. Sensors in every UPS truck track when drivers’ seatbelts are put on, when doors open and close and when the engines start in order to monitor employee productivity at all times.

The technology company Steelcase has experimented with monitoring employees’ faces to judge their expressions. The company claims that this innovation, which monitors and analyzes workers’ facial movements throughout the work day, is being used for research and to inform best practices on the job. Other companies are also taking interest in this kind of mood-observing technology, from Bank of America to Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc.

These developments are part of a larger trend of workers being watched and judged—often at jobs that offer low pay and demand long hours. Beyond simply tracking worker performance, it is becoming more common for companies to monitor the emails and phone calls their employees make, analyzing personal traits along with output.

Some companies are now using monitoring techniques—referred to as “people analytics”—to learn as much as they can about you, from your communication patterns to what types of websites you visit to how often you use the bathroom. This type of privacy invasion can cause employees immense stress, as they work with the constant knowledge that their boss is aware of their every behavior—and able to use that against them as they see fit.

Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute at Cornell University, tells In These Times that the level of surveillance workers are facing is increasing exponentially.

“If you look at what some people call ‘people analytics,’ it’s positively frightening,” Maltby says. “People analytics devices get how often you talk, the tone of your voice, where you are every single second you’re at work, your body language, your facial expressions and something called ‘patterns of interaction.’” He explains that some of these devices even record what employees say at work.

According to some experts, this high level of employee surveillance may actually harm the companies that use these techniques.

“In general, people experience more stress when they feel that someone is looking over their shoulder, real or virtual,” Michael Childers, director at the School for Workers, tells In These Times. “There is a large body of research documenting that stressful workplaces can potentially lead to many problems that reduce company profits, including increased turnover, more sick days used, higher workplace compensation costs, and ironically, even lower productivity.”

Richard Wolff, a professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, tells In These Times that this type of surveillance “deepens the antagonism, mutual suspicion, and hostility of employer relative to employee. It degrades worker morale and will probably fail—leading employers to conclude not that such surveillance is a bad idea, but rather than they need to automate to get rid of workers altogether.”

While this level of worker surveillance may be alarming, it has so far gone largely unchecked. Congress has never passed a law to regulate employee surveillance, Maltby says, and he doesn’t think it will any time soon. However, he says that either Congress or the Supreme Court could finally decide that employers have gone too far when they start tracking employee movement during a worker’s time off.

“The fight we’re gearing up for is [tracking] behavior off duty,” Maltby says. “Every cell phone in America has GPS capabilities baked into it,” along with cameras and microphones. Maltby worries that employers could soon begin using this technology to track the behavior of their employees outside of work. If this were to happen, Maltby believes U.S. lawmakers could be compelled to step in.

One the of the fears that labor and privacy advocates hold is that, over time, workers could get used to these types of invasions, and begin accepting them as a normal part of the job.

“The first time people hear about the newest privacy invasion, they get extremely angry, but eventually they just get used to it,” Maltby says. For example, at many jobs drug tests are now seen as standard, despite the fact that they invade employees’ private lives by monitoring their behaviors outside of work.

At a time of soaring inequality, low-wage workers are bearing the brunt of efforts to increase productivity and profits. The rise of these new tracking techniques show that companies are moving toward increasing their control over the lives of their employees.

While workers at the bottom of the wage scale may be the first to face such dystopian working conditions, other industries could soon embrace them. If we don’t want to live and work under the constant supervision of a far-away boss, now is the time to speak up and push back.

by Thor Benson/Working In These Times

Reprinted with permission from In These Times. All rights reserved. Portside is proud to feature content from In These Times, a publication dedicated to covering progressive politics, labor and activism. To get more news and provocative analysis from In These Times, sign up  for a free weekly e-newsletter or subscribe to the magazine at a special low rate.

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