Small production teams ‘inevitable’

Press, 7 October 1988, Page 11

Small production teams ‘inevitable’

PA Wellington Unions will have to accept as inevitable small factory floor production teams such as those at Nissan Manufacturing in Auckland, the Council of Trade Unions says. A council research officer, Mr Paul Swain, said factory floor production teams were an international trend on which unions would have to reach a united position. Mr Swain has just returned from a productivity conference in Canada. Big hierarchies were proving too slow and inflexible to compete in a tough and unpredictable economic market, and

unions in Canada and the United States had faced the inevitability of smaller units. The New Zealand trade union movement tended to be suspicious of talk of increased productivity because historically it has meant job loss.

“There are also fears that workers would be expected to work harder for less money,” Mr Swain said. He said it was possible to consider alternative organisational structures which would be acceptable to the union movement.

“My personal feeling is that a lot of the things that are being

proposed shouldn’t be resisted en masse but the union movement has to come up with a strategy on how to deal with them,” Mr Swain said. For example, the union movement should insist on the right to know about and be consulted on proposed changes — particularly factory organisation and methods of work.

There had to be security for workers in the process of change and access to a share in the benefits of productivity gains. Smaller production teams had seductive aspects such as the family concept, more consultation, and better facilities, but there was a danger of workers

being divided — competing against each other and weakening the union movement. Lower wages and poor work conditions were a possible outcome, he said. Unions would be in a much stronger position if they united. “My own view is that if we can’t come up with a unified position we’ll be rolled,” Mr Swain said.

He planned to promote discussion within C.T.U. unions to try to reach a unified position.

The Trade and Industry Department provided travel costs for Mr Swain and a departmental official to attend the Sixth World Productivity Congress in Montreal last week.