Worker Commitment and Labour Management Relations under Lean Production at CAMI

Abstract

Efforts by CAMI, a unionized Suzuki-General Motors auto plant in Ontario, to construct a workplace characterized by worker commitment and cooperative labour-management relations are examined. Why did these efforts fall? Why, of all the Japanese or joint-venture transplants in North America, was it at CAMI that industrial conflict occurred? Does the experience hold important implications for worker and union responses to lean production in other settings? The findings presented are the result of a longitudinal investigation conducted over a two year period by the CAW Research Group on CAMI. The researchers had an unusual degree of access to the shopfloor, and base many oftheir observations on data drawn from a randomly selected sample of workers.

Primary problems associated with the health and welfare of employees observed when implementing lean manufacturing projects

“…Regarding the increased number of tasks (P6) [9,14,23,28,56,62,63,72,73], including inspection and maintenance, these papers indicate that these extra duties do not make a multi-skilled worker because they are simple variations of similar jobs, requiring With employees' framework smaller than firms that operate with another production system and without buffer stocks, lean companies use overtime as a way to adjust production to demand (P12) [26,54,56,59,61,63,67,73,74]. The reported problems related to overtime are arbitrary schedules, excessive overtime, warnings given at short notice and coercion -through payment -to avoid denial.…”

“…The resistance, disbelief and deception of workers about lean (P19) [53,63,64,[81][82][83] affect the performance of the system. There are three distinct situations: the first is related to experienced employees leaving their comfort zones to allow the implementation of a new system; the second situation is the lack of trust from workers that do not believe in the necessity of changes neither the durability of them (both are based on their past experiences); and the last one is the deception of those who believed in the announced improvements and realized that, for some reason(s), these advances have not occurred and will not happen (workers are encouraged to believe that, working in a lean company, they will satisfy their necessities of creation and control, but their expectations are not reached [82]).…”

“…With weakened union power, workers have less chance to make claims (P15) [56,59,63,64,66,69,72]. According to Humphrey [59], companies which use lean practices "have a strong interest in minimising or controlling the activities of unions in their plants".…”

“…The difficulty of lean's diffusion from Japan to other countries (P9) [15,28,38,56,63,67,84] is given, first, to cultural differences. Toyota has developed this method of production in very specific conditions that were important to their success.…”

Le lean : pensée et impensé d’une activité sans relâchement

“…Par ailleurs, se pose inévitablement la question de savoir la portée qu'on donne à ce qu'on trouvera dans de tels textes à partir du moment où on a rapidement su qu'un écart pouvait exister entre ce qui était décrit et érigé en modèle par ces textes et les applications en contexte, porteuses de variations. Au début des années 1990, c'était un thème récurrent des analyses portant sur le toyotisme et sa diffusion de par le monde et, plus spécifiquement, sur l'étude des « transplants » (Fairris & Tohyama, 2002 ;Rinehart, Huxley, & Robertson, 1994 ;Stewart, Durand, Lewchuk, Yates, & Danford, 2006 ; pour une application du modèle de Karasek aux personnels d'un transplant en 1999, voir Schouteten et Benders, 2004).…”