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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14/LUMBERWORKER/JUNE, 1999