Reply #2: This American Life had a show just on this plant last week.

[Javaman]

Although the show was good, I have noticed a subtle anti union trend in many of their shows lately. A perfect example was when GM tried to us the NUMMI model in their van nuys plant. Early in the show they state that the plant had nothing but problems and the workers refused to work within the model.

But then later in the show, they state that beginning in 1989 GM was having to cut costs across the board to make up for budget short falls and poor sales and as a result, the van nuys plant had to be shut.

Also as GM was having some massive problems (at other plants) in the early 80's with supposed union issues, those who were interviewed for the show were ex-employees that retired as management claimed to have used drugs on the line, drank booze and had sex during business hours on GM property. However, none of those interviewed had been former line workers who retired as line workers. That was very suspect to me.

The failure was clearly in management. They also used the argument that "unions became so powerful that we couldn't do anything to curtail the various illegal activities of the employees". That single statement was such colossal bullshit. Any union person knows sure as shit, when you become a member you have to adhere to union rules. All the things that management were claiming happened during business hours are clearly a violation of union rules. Any good manager who has a good working relationship with the union boss could deal with these issues very effectively.

But given all the fuck ups regarding productivity and how management treated the workers (also stated in the piece but made it sound as if the line workers answered to no one), is it any wonder that GM failed?

Workers work and management manage. But the Mangers at the GM plant were poorly trained managers who never listened, paid attention or rewarded their workers for good work, ideas for improvement or just general courtesy.

It took the retraining in Japan to get managers to clear the crap out of their eyes and ears.

Several decades of good old boy management is what lead to GM's failings at their plants. Deeply entrenched under-trained managers who ruled plants like little fiefdoms is what was the undoing.

NUMMI was the exception, because they worked closely with the Japanese by sending over teams of workers to get trained until the entire plant was up to speed.

In Van Nuys, they tried the same thing, but without the Japanese counterpart. Once again, because of lack of basic managerial experience or training, no one took to the new way of thinking because rather than capitalizing on the idea of team spirit, managers pit 5 man crew teams against one another and rotated shifts so no one person could hope to ever see an opportunity for job growth. It failed miserably.

A very interesting comment at the end of the show said as much. By the time GM finally filed for bankruptcy, they were at their most productive because by that time, a new generation of managers trained in the NUMMI style had taken over via attrition of the old guard. So with new managerial techniques, things began to improve. Again, it was an improvement over the past managerial failure that made things pick up not the failure of workers not wanting to work.

Simple improvements of just listening to workers complaints and ideas to improve the line production helped things via allowing the workers to understand a that they are part of the GM process of producing something they could be proud of just like management.

A simple thing as stopping the line when something needed to be unfucked, not only improved worker performance and attitude but also allowed GM to produced cars from the NUMMI plant that were less prone to brake down or recall. Or be send to the yard to be unfucked. Fix it when the problem occurs instead of putting it off until later.

Basic common sense, right? But given the age old and badly worn out idea of, "the line must never be stopped or else you will be fired" mentality being the prevailing attitude, GM management only set themselves up for failure.