Share the dream, live the nightmare
PETER LUSK describes six months on the drier line at Fisher & Paykel in New Zealand
"Peter, useless! Peter useless!", chanted my workmates. "Peter useless!", they roared. My name echoed around the factory for everyone to hear.
From time to time other workers on the drier assembly line at Fisher & Paykel got called "useless", and I'd joined in the chanting myself. Usually it was in good humour and it broke the monotony. But this time I wasn't finding it so funny.
In fact I was in trouble. It was three months since I started as a temp, and this particular day I'd gotten a bit careless, letting my stocks slip down. On top of that I had a headache.
At 4 in the afternoon the big boss team leader took over the work station two upstream from me and started cracking on the pace. He and his young mate were racing, and sweat was pouring off them. They were working faster than the line speed and building up a stockpile of drier drums.
The opposite was happening to me. The faster they worked, the quicker they ate up my product, and soon I had none. The more I tried to rush, the more I fumbled. The more screws I dropped, the more attention I drew to myself. "Peter useless", my workmates chanted and laughed.
But a couple of the guys weren't laughing. They were giving me very hostile stares. I was really tired now and couldn't work harder if I tried. But why the hostility? This shocked me. If they were so keen to break a record and please the company, why not step in and give me a hand?
'Teamwork'
Fisher & Paykel operates under the Teamwork. Other names for this management technique include Nissan Way, TQM, quality management and Deming Way. It's a scientific method for extracting the biggest profit out of the workers for the least labour cost, using multi-skilled teams and heavy doses of industrial psychology.
F&P introduced it a number of years ago as TQM but no longer gives a name to this diabolical technique. However, the company has named a meeting room at its East Tamaki site the "Deming Room" in honour of W. Edwards Deming, the US management scientist who pioneered the field.
It wasn't until I'd worked at F&P that I really appreciated its effects. The workers on the line are grouped in teams — in our case 15 workers building the drier drum. One of these is a company-appointed team leader who combines the roles of pace setter and supervisor. Each worker is trained to do most or all of the jobs in the section. Management controls the speed of the production line, pushing for higher and higher production.
As the line speed increases, the workers come under stress. The experienced hands and the young and athletic handle it well. Some like to compete against the clock and beat their slower or older workmates.
As the speed increases, someone will start getting behind. But everyone else is busy with their own job and doesn't want to help the slow one. They know that as each production target is replaced with a higher one, a worker who is not making the grade will sooner or later let down the team.
One way out for workers in this position is to pressure the slow worker to leave in the hope that he or she will be replaced by someone faster. A hostile stare or a bit of taunting may give the slow one the message.
The most devilish feature is this setting of worker against worker, undermining the traditional solidarity of the work force and replacing it with competition between workers to meet the company's agenda.
Attitude
By anybody's standards, drier line workers are amazingly productive. When the fine is at full speed, the rhythm, skill and teamwork of the largely Pacific Island work force are impressive to see, especially when you consider they can keep up the pace and high quality of work for 10 hours a day.
Don't think all workers are sucked in by Teamwork. A couple more months into the job, I'd mastered five job stations, made plenty of friends and was managing to keep out of trouble with the leader. One day my workmate turned to me with a serious look on his face and said, "You know what your problem is, Pete?"
"No", I said.
"It's attitude!"
We both had a big laugh. He plays football and explained how his team are trained to the FAST formula. F stands for fitness, A for attitude, S for speed, T for teamwork. Fitness, speed and teamwork are important, but most important is attitude. Translated to the workplace, the company needs workers with a company attitude to boost profits, and beat competitors.
To achieve a company attitude, F&P goes to great lengths. Every five years the company closes down for half a day for a brainwashing extravaganza designed to bump the work force another step down the road to a company culture — where workers forget they were ever part of the working class and identify more and more with the company. I was lucky that my six months at F&P coincided with this event.
On the day, 2000 workers and staff poured into the darkened Logan Campbell Centre in Auckland. Above the stage, amazing sports scenes flashed across three large picture screens. Champion skiers zoomed across the finish line, rugby heroes scored spectacular tries, windsurfers looped the loop then disappeared into the waves, a motocross rider fell from his bike which went out of control, crashing into the crowd. Music blared — The heat is on, show no mercy. Flashing on the screens intermittently between the pictures were the words "Win-Win".
F&P chief executive Gary Paykel appeared on stage and announced a surprise visitor. The guys go wild: it's Aussie rugby league legend Mal Meninga. Mal shakes hands with Gary, then tells us how he took up the challenge to become a great football player. Then follows netball great Wai Taumaunu with an account of her challenging sporting career. Then some guy who was on the Team NZ America's Cup yacht with — yes, you guessed it! — his big challenge.
Rex Jones of the Engineers Union is next up. He praises F&P to the skies — but says absolutely nothing about wages and conditions. Gary praises Rex ("his words always well chosen") and the union ("always part of the team").
I'm thinking: I know the company would've paid big money to get the sporting greats along, but what about Rex? I bet the workers paid that bill!
Somewhere in the middle of all this there is a ripping sound which spreads around the auditorium as everyone discovers taped under their seat a company hat. Across the brow is written "Share the dream", the latest company slogan.
Share the dream? Id rather share the money!
Gary thanks Colenso Communications and Multi Media for creating the occasion and tells us of company expansion plans in Australia and America. He warns that competitors in Thailand have produced an innovative slim-line fridge which is gobbling up markets. As we pour out of the auditorium to pick up a company-packed lunch, I hear one worker shout to his mate, "How was that for brainwashing!" Even the lunch had a message — the chocolate bar was stamped "F&P — The Innovators".
Many workers at F&P are strongly affected by Teamwork and are well on the road to a company culture. But others are pretty smart to what's going on. Every day they see the 450 driers and 700 washers they've produced, and they know what they cost to buy in the shops. Someone told me it takes only eight washing machines to pay the smart drive workers' wages for a day.
Union
The Engineers Union plays a shocking role at the plant. It's through and through a company union. During my time at F&P, we set a record of 550 driers a day, and company profits jumped 57% to $42 million.
As if to celebrate, the Engineers Union sold us a pay cut! Our reward for a huge increase in productivity was a 20 cents per hour pay cut for all new assembly workers, with the money going to improve the pay of team leaders. Several workers spoke out against it at the union meeting, but the officials did a great sales job, saying it wouldn't affect us, just new workers taken on.
Even delegates who start off on the side of the workers are soon disciplining the work force on the company's behalf. It's a 10-hour day in laundry division — 10 hours on your feet working hard — and at the end of it, everyone wants to get out that factory door. At about 5.22pm the workers start moving. Soon there's an unstoppable current down the aisles, and despite the best efforts of team leaders and the assembly manager, the wave is unstoppable. One day as we were heading out I heard my union delegate yell: "Hold it everybody! We don't finish until 5.25!"
As a temporary worker who wanted a permanent job, I'd been planning to keep my mouth shut at times like this, but I spun around and snapped at her: "You're the union delegate; you should be at the front leading us out!"
"That's the old style of unionist, I'm the new style", she barked back.
F&P puts a lot of effort into delegates, taking them away for regular "interview skills" training sessions. The delegate who tried to stop us leaving early was a young woman of about 18. The day after I'd had my name chanted around the factory for being "useless", the team leader — who strutted around the place like a cop — came to my work station and told me to follow him. I thought I might be sacked, so I called out to my delegate to come as a witness and support me.
The team leader started off with a pep talk. Then my delegate spoke up to make it clear she doesn't "take sides".
"But I want you to take my side", I said.
"Peter, you've probably come from a different background", she replied. "We want to put things like strikes and conflicts behind us. Strikes never achieved anything. Here we talk things through."
The team leader then asked me why I had gotten behind the day before. I explained that I'd started a month later than the other temps, I had a headache and Teamwork spotlights anyone who is slower. Another reason is my age — I'm 47 and although that's not old, you don't have the stamina of a 20-year-old and don't pick up skills quite as fast.
"That's rubbish", interrupted the delegate. "My mother is 49 and does a very physical job in a team with a lot of younger workers. She can work just as hard as any of them. Age is no excuse, Peter."
She then looked at me accusingly: "What's your attendance like?"
"It's good" said the team leader, stepping in as if to defend me from the delegate.
Eight-hour interview
With their emphasis on team players with attitude, F&P goes to great lengths when selecting new workers. My intake endured eight hours of interview spread over two days. It starts with a company video, tests for basic maths and manual skills, then how you contribute as a team player. Team leaders, (delegates?) and management watched as we played pool, table tennis and volley ball.
We also took part in a game where we were astronauts, lost on the moon. Together we had to prioritise from a list of equipment the items necessary to get us to a rendezvous point on the far side of the moon. Management watches to see how everyone interacts in solving the problem.
In order to maintain the facade that everyone benefits, F&P does things like shout cakes and buns at morning smoko when a new production record is reached. The cafeteria, toilets and smoko rooms are modern, clean and tidy, and ear plugs and gloves are in unlimited supply. Workers are generally spoken to politely and don't have to clock in or out. You can use the phone at any time you're not busy. None of these things cost the company much — they're far cheaper than a production bonus or a pay increase.
Automation
There are two production lines in laundry division — drier line, where I was, and smart drive line. Drier line is older technology, with a chain-driven line and heavy physical work in the drum building section. Smart drive washing machines are built on a high tech line where machinery does the hard work, and the first third of the line is completely automated. My work station was opposite this automated section.
Comparing our hard labour on drier line with the robot-driven section of smart drive reminded me of the situation I'd read about early in the industrial revolution, when hand loom weavers worked 20 hours a day trying to compete with machine looms, exhausting themselves in a race they knew they must eventually lose.
It was also clear to me that given the capital, technology is already here to build a washing machine without a human hand touching it. Eighty smart drive assembly workers can be replaced by three or four machine minders and a maintenance team. The days of the assembly worker are numbered. But in the meantime, companies like F&P use Teamwork as they compete with bigger rivals which have cheaper labour and/or greater potential for automation.
Japanese corporations which adopted Deming's ideas in the postwar period have raised labour exploitation to a level where it is not uncommon for workers to die on the job. The Japanese government has finally been forced to give legal recognition to death from overwork (karoshi) and compensate the families of victims.
I have heard that New Zealand workers in the pulp and paper industry are working up to 100 hours a week under Teamwork, with a coroner reporting that overwork contributed to the death of one man. The working-class slogan "Workers of the World Unite" is under threat from the capitalist slogan "Workers of the World Compete". It's sobering to note that international competitiveness is the policy of organisations as divergent as the Business Roundtable, National Party, Labour Party, Alliance, Council of Trade Unions and Engineers Union.
Termination
With a dozen others, I finished the job at the termination ceremony. This was held in the Deming Room, a boardroom-like place with big swivel chairs for everyone and Deming's 12 points on the wall.
"Wow, we can be executives!", I joked to the guy next to me. "Share the dream", he replied.
The assembly manager thanked us for our hard work, pointing out that we'd broken records for production and were part of the best drier team ever. Unfortunately, some of us had not come up to the company's Five Criteria. Management had consulted with the union as to who among the temps got permanent jobs and who had to go, so it was "fair".
He then handed over to two union delegates. My delegate said how sad it was we had to go, how tears had been wept for us, but each of us knew where we had failed to meet the criteria. She also said the selection process was fair.
She noted that one guy had poor attendance from working two jobs and asked why he did it. "Security", was the reply. Being a temp and a family man, he had to guard against having no job at all. There was an awkward silence. "Who'd like a Coke?", said the head of personnel, and he rushed off to get drinks from a handy fridge.
I guessed the company had set up the delegates to take most of the flak over our termination, but I was annoyed by my delegate's accusing tone. I'd seen all the workers on the job, and they seemed excellent to me. I asked the delegates what was my worst feature that meant I'd failed to keep my job. The delegate from smart drive snapped at me, saying the union wasn't that deeply involved in who stayed and who went.
So that's it, I thought to myself. The union doesn't have any real involvement at all. TheY simply rubber stamp the terminations, but in doing so allow the company to claim that the union is a partner in sacking us.
Despite knowing better, I walked out the gate muttering to myself: "Sacked by the union! Sacked by the union!"