Unions don’t increase efficiency
John M Berger of Lakewood w
Can you imagine the CEO of a successful company, such as Toyota, promoting a union to increase “efficiency"! What a joke!
Thanks for your consideration.
This letter has not been edited.
DUH, Unions only promote laziness, bad attitudes towards the very employers that pay them and far too excessive pay for the worst worker and not enough for the best. Why do you think all of the toys are now made in China?
Posted by on November 10, 2007 02:52 PMThe purpose of a union is not to improve efficiency or productivity of the company, the plant, or the workers within either. The purpose of a union is to negotiate the "best" compensation package for it's members regardless of market conditions, economic forces, the health of the company/plant, or anything else for that matter. Unions had their day and my dad was union so I have a grudging historical respect for their place in American history. But they have lost their way, badly. Modern unions are bastions of inefficiency, misguided loyalties and ideas, and a seemingly total inability to understand or a total disregard for the laws of supply and demand and the modern global economy in which we now all live.
Posted by Michael on November 10, 2007 03:19 PMPut Impeachment ON The Table of the House Judiciary Committee
This week Dennis Kucinich led an heroic effort to put the impeachment of Dick Cheney ON the table by requesting a floor vote on H.Res. 333. As expected, BushDemocrat Steny Hoyer moved to table the bill. And then all hell broke loose as 165 Republicans voted with Kucinich and 85 brave Democrats to force a debate on impeachment over the objections of Nancy Pelosi. To block that debate, Hoyer moved to send H.Res. 333 back to the Judiciary Committee, and this motion passed. Watch David Swanson explain the events to Paul Jay of The Real News .
So what do we do next to move impeachment forward?
1. Email all of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee:
http://www.democrats.com/topelosiandjudiciary
and call them:
http://www.democrats.com/house-judiciary-democrats
Put Impeachment ON The Table of the House Judiciary Committee
This week Dennis Kucinich led an heroic effort to put the impeachment of Dick Cheney ON the table by requesting a floor vote on H.Res. 333. As expected, BushDemocrat Steny Hoyer moved to table the bill. And then all hell broke loose as 165 Republicans voted with Kucinich and 85 brave Democrats to force a debate on impeachment over the objections of Nancy Pelosi. To block that debate, Hoyer moved to send H.Res. 333 back to the Judiciary Committee, and this motion passed. Watch David Swanson explain the events to Paul Jay of The Real News .
So what do we do next to move impeachment forward?
1. Email all of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee:
http://www.democrats.com/topelosiandjudiciary
and call them:
http://www.democrats.com/house-judiciary-democrats
idk - And ALL of the products and services that you enjoy today are courtesy of the entrepreneurs and companies that developed them, invested the capital to build the plants to make them, and took the risks in a free market economy to compete for your dollar. So what is your point? Because the unions once did some good that they get a pass now for being out of touch and almost obsolete?
Posted by Michael on November 10, 2007 05:16 PMMichael, what you said here is of course largely true. The objective of the union is to protect the worker against the machinations of the owners. Your experience in 6s and productivity tools no doubt shows that this is often at the expense of efficiency and productivity.
However, it is the very concept of trying to turn humans in to simply engines of production ala the “scientific management” schemes of the past, and the outsourcing schemes of the present, that the unions oppose.
One of the few tools that workers have to resist the dehumanization and destabilization of the workplace, is solidarity. By standing together, the worker has a fighting chance to make a workplace that is more stable and more fulfilling.
The old Taylorite concept of efficiency measures and the resulting “system X” form of command & control production management can be compared with the “system Y” form of participative production.
When workers feel that they have a fulfilling job and that they have a role to play in the firm as a human, rather than as an exchangeable and expendable machine part, they are more productive and above all, more innovative.
Six-sigma measures failure rates and efficiency as though humans are simply machine parts, it doesn’t measure innovation, enthusiasm, or initiative, and in a globalised economy where knowledge is the main competitive edge, the ability to learn faster than the competition will be the key factor in survival.
People do not learn fast and innovate at work as much when they are alienated and afraid.
Unions provide the worker with a safety net and bargaining tool when management is irrational and acting in a manner detrimental to the wellbeing of the worker and the society.
Skank, what are you talking about “Six-sigma measures failure rates and efficiency as though humans are simply machine parts, it doesn’t measure innovation enthusiasm, or initiative”? Measure, analyze, improve, control. You simply forgot to mention the last 3. And no it’s not about controlling humans, but the process control to reduce variances. Yes, improvement requires innovation and enthusiasm and the participation of the workers, just like with Kaizen. The problem is, most of these guys feel conformable doing the same thing over and over, resisting change. To improve you have to make changes.
Unions don’t provide the worker with safety net if they all loose their jobs, like whole factories shutting down in Michigan.
Uno, 6s is primarily a measure & control methodology with heavy focus on the measure. Statistical process control is the heart of it, and innovation gets but a passing mention.
6s is just a logical continuation of Taylor’s “scientific management”. I didn’t forget the last three, I just don’t think that 6s says anything at all about the middle two beyond lip service, simply because innovation is unpredictable and unmeasurable with 6s tools.
” it’s not about controlling humans, but the process control to reduce variances “
Exactly, humans are pictured as a source of error and a variance to be engineered away. Look where Taylor started and tell me that his method didn’t engineer humanity out and turn the human worker into just an expendable part of a process. Look at where “scientific management” ends, and tell me that you don’t wind up with disillusioned and uninspired workers.
” , improvement requires innovation and enthusiasm and the participation of the workers, just like with Kaizen.
Sure, Kaizen is an entirely different concept and fits very well with teamwork and innovation and you measure it best with balanced-scorecard methods rather than 6s process-control.
How somebody solves a problem is unpredictable, and the degree to which workers turn the “what” into reality by innovation of the “how” is often left out of the description of manufacture. The talk is always about some bright idea and capital, and never about the thousand innovations on the factory-floor that turn a product concept and capital into a finished product. The innovation isn’t all at the top.
” Unions don’t provide the worker with safety net if they all loose their jobs, like whole factories shutting down in Michigan.”
Agreed, sometimes unions fail to provide enough of a net, and sure, sometimes they contribute to the problem, but the failure of American steelwork was at the top, not due to the worker.
It was predominately a failure of leadership and foresight by management, not because of the workers.
Where this goes now that America’s competitive advantage is increasingly restricted to information and knowledge-workers, I don’t know.
What is clear to me though, is that the 6s and Taylorite approach to management is less appropriate, not more.
Banga, “Exactly, humans are pictured as a source of error and a variance to be engineered away.” – well, humans are the source of errors (Poka-Yoke anyone?). But to engineer humanity out in it’s self takes humans and employs a lot of smart people. In simple terms, those machines have to be engineered, manufactured, programmed, maintained, and at the end recycled. That in it’s self takes a lot of people. Technological advances don’t eliminate jobs, like some likes to believe, but creates new ones.
Look at the evolution of computers, starting from nothing but a few concepts and sprouting into a multi-billion dollar industry employing millions around the world. Try to manufacture just a hard drive without 6s or very tight process control and see how far you get. But to able to evolve that technology took inventiveness and innovation, DFSS practices and rigid discipline. Yes, the two can and does coexists. If inventiveness prevails, nothing ever gets done. If a rigid discipline is followed, nothing ever changes.
At one time the union did serve a purpose in our history in protecting the worker. Not anymore they are out for themselves they take there dues and do nothing. Who protects us from the unions now look at the grocery stores that are union stores and those that are not look at the prices.It has become harder and harder to go to King Soopers,Albertson those that are still open and Safeway. Then go to Walmart it is not that Walmart has more people are going there because they don't have to pay as much.
What is up with JVB and impeachment on the table were are writing about Unions not impeachment?
Posted by brad on November 10, 2007 08:51 PMBrad, tell me what your vision is of where outsourcing, plant relocation, and insourcing lead to.
Initially the drive was to move manufacturing to cheaper locations with fewer labour, safety, and environmental laws, that trend is still going on with continual loses in manufacturing jobs.
The argument was that American workers could step up to more challenging and higher skilled jobs, but then outsourcing of those jobs also started. Right now helpdesk jobs are routinely outsourced, and the trend now includes legal clerks, interpretation of x-rays and other medical tests, and a host of higher level knowledge jobs.
Attracting scab workers aka illegal immigrants to offer cheap alternatives to US workers has also taken a bite out of the job market.
So where do you see this going?
Do only PhD and management jobs remain in the US, or just the investors?
UNIONS DECREASE EFFICIENCY:
Have we already forgotten the sorry fate of the auto, steel and textile industries in the USA. U.A. W. == U Ain't Workin.
"The Big-3" can't shut down fast enough and layoff workers fast enough, all-in UAW costs of about $75 per hour have a way of making that industry non-competitive.
Meanwhile, and in sharp contrast, foreign transplants (Totota, Honda, Volkswagen, Nissan, etc.) are relentlessly taking market share with a higher quality product. They are growing and expanding at the expense of the UAW. And every time the UAW tries to organize these transplants, the American transplant workers who enjoy growth and job security turn the UAW vote down. The UAW enjoys a 0% success rate--not one single transplant has been organized over the past several decades. Could there be something that these hard working Americans know something about that the unionistas don't want to tell us?
Remember: U.A. W. == U Ain't Workin'
Hank, to what degree do you think management complacency and lack of leadership played in this.
Or was it all the fault of the unions and workers?
Can you imagine a corporation firing an incompetent employee and giving them 128 million severence pay? yet that is what happens everytime an incompetent CEO is dismissed...and then another corpration hires them!!!!!!
Posted by on November 13, 2007 07:23 AMCEOs do not promote efficiency. They create sloth and greed. They steal from employees and cause high prices with their multi-million dollar salaries and benefits. Most wander from company to company after getting fired, then re-hired like baseball managers on losing teams.
Posted by on November 14, 2007 12:40 PM