Capital & Class

http://cnc.sagepub.com/ Striking Smarter and Harder at Vauxhall: the new industrial relations of lean production?
Paul Stewart Capital & Class 1997 21: 1 DOI: 10.1177/030981689706100101 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/21/1/1

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[We aim to] form a Vauxhall people, wo partnership between all the rking together to win, by focusing on customer satisfa cti continuous innovation on through teamwork and Together To Win: Lu and improvement (Working ton Plant Agreemen t, 1992)

Striking Smarter and Harder at Vauxhall: the new industrial relations of lean production?
by Paul Stewart
They dont underst an the situation they ha d that we are taking action because of ve lean production that created. They cant see that its their has pushed the lad ETWEEN THE LATE SUMMER though s to it. I tell , we of 1995 and mid February people ar are denitely playing it smarter now. you this e voting with their Anyhow, feet 1996, Vauxhall Motors, the Fridays. (Vauxhall-GM shop and clocking off early on ste UK subsidiary of General Motors, response to spontaneous actio ward December 1995 in struggled to come to terms with n by assembly line workers) the new industrial relations of lean production. For the first time in The carefully contrived public relations more than a decade the company faced image extolling the virtues of lean well planned action by employees and production for employees was in trade unions, in particular the trouble. Workers at the two sites which Transport and General Workers together employ almost 10,000 workers Union (TGWU) at its two assembly took action in support of their claim for plants at Ellesmere Port in the north a reduction in the working week and an west of England (the Astra plant) and across the board wage rise. Their Luton in the south (the Vectra plant). campaign included a ban on overtime

2 and a two hour unofficial strike every Friday. Vauxhall had a major problem in tackling this de facto assertion of shop oor power. This power, according to one production manager at Luton, initially embarrassed the plant management because the rhetoric of consensus and participation which had been built up around lean production was being exposed to scrutiny. In the context of discussing what he referred to as the new person to person approach embodied in the Quality Network Production System, GMs 1988 European quality and human relations initiative, he described in somewhat graphic terms managements initial reluctance to use the boot. Yet the latter was precisely what many employees were beginning to feel underlay the cosy assumptions of involvement and consensus espoused by protagonists of lean production in the assembly plants. ( Working Together To Win: Luton Plant Agreement 1992. For a general defence of lean production see, inter alia, Womack et al, 1990; Oliver, 1991; Oliver et al, 1994). Together with the 1995 action by unions at Ford (UK), (which also witnessed unofficial strike action) the Vauxhall dispute represented a watershed in the social and ideological restructuring of workplace relations in the UK automotive sector. Not since the so-called We Will Manage dispute at Ellesmere Port in 1979, recalled by Marsden et al, (1985: 32) have workers at Vauxhall been involved in action of such widespread significance. In November 1995, workers voted by over 70% 1 in favour of strike action in pursuit of their claim and by almost 90% in favour of action short of a strike (Electoral Reform Ballot Services, 1995) this was a remarkable result in the current political and economic

Capital & Class #61 circumstances. Yet anyone close to the industrial and employee relations developments at plant level could not for long have remained too surprised by this result. Management misjudges the shop oor
Last night down in the compound there they would have torched the Vectras if we hadnt have stopped them. The company just dont see that the lads (and lasses too) have had enough of lean. (Luton shop steward)

The trigger for the Vauxhall dispute was managements response to the August claim by the unions on pay and conditions which the company argued could jeopardise important elements of GMs long term investment portfolio in the UK. The unions were calling for: 20 across the board in year one and a 10% increase in year two; a shorter working week, down from 39 to 37 hours; a track workers allowance of 3% and sick pay entitlement from day one of absence. The main elements of managements initial response in September 1995 consisted of: a two year pay deal (3% in year one with a cost of living increase in year two); an increase in sickness benefit and the consolidation of the various local bonus schemes. Vauxhall clearly felt this would assuage employee claims in respect of productivity and quality gains made since 1989, particularly, in their view, at Luton, (Vauxhall, October, 1995). Indeed, the company recognised these gains were largely attributable to increases in employee productivity tied to the introduction of key elements of lean production as these affected assembly workers in the main. Given this background of increased productivity in the context of lean

Striking Smarter and Harder production, it would appear that Vauxhall had misjudged the feeling of shop floor workers. The reality is that the impact of lean production on the labour process had begun to undermine the rhetoric of participation in decision making on vital matters such as job development schemes. This is because change was (and still is) increasingly linked to staff cutbacks by way of outsourcing in particularone of the central objectives of lean production. The real story here is how the unions were able to capitalise on the inherent contradictions of the new technical and social arrangements at the heart of lean production. Confronting leanlaying the basis for union advance
Keep communications and good relations with the shop oor (Shop steward, Ellesmere Port)

3 However, the reduction in the length of the working week does represent a very significant gain since agitation around time and effort has grown out of a general dissatisfaction with the nature of the labour process under lean production. In this sense, company acceptance of the hourly reduction can be understood as an important and tangible gain. If time represents even bigger money under lean than under the regime of Measured Day Work, a reduction in work time is an important gain since it begins to undermine in a very concrete way for workers, some of the logic at the heart of team working. The unions have been campaigning for fteen years for a 37 hour week but this has often been the first demand to be dropped in pay negotiations. But the additional feature which continues to erode employee confidence in management is the company commitment to a three year deal. Managements assumption is that this will eventually force the unions out of their historical, political and institutional role as key players in the bargaining process since, so the argument goes, shop floor conditions will increasingly be addressed by team briefings under the auspices of the Continuous Improvement Programme (CIP). However, this view suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the source of the original discontent and the basis for union (and the TGWU especially) strength on the shop oor. The dispute was infused with irony. Having poured tens of thousands of dollars into the improvement of employee relations (via team briefings and the CIP) in the UK, GM and Vauxhall management felt it was inconceivable that a dispute would develop around precisely the core message of involvement encapsulated

In the end, the unions had to settle for a deal on pay and conditions which was less than was hoped for at shopfloor level. When the companys final offer was made, after six months of an often bitter struggle, particularly at Luton, workers still voted to reject the deal although the majority against Vauxhalls offer was considered by the TGWU to be too slim to continue the dispute. 2 The nal deal, based upon a three year cycle, comprised: the reduction of the work week from 39 to 38 hours; 4.5% pay rise in year one plus cost of living top-up in years two and three; a new car plan scheme and the reduction in family hospital allowance time for night shift workers. This last element has left a residue of discontent with some workers arguing that they were, in the words of an Ellesmere Port shop steward, sold down the river.

4 both in the Luton plant agreement, Working Together to Win (1992) and the so-called V6 Agreement covering Ellesmere Port (1989). After all, these agreements promised to promote employee involvement and participation in key aspects of the lean labour process, from kaizen to teamworking on the line. One of managements greatest mistakes, however, was to underestimate the negative consequences of the new production regime upon the workforce. The problem was that as the rhetoric of participation and smarter work was pushed increasingly onto a vanishing direct labour force, the reality of lean management began to bite. Work was becoming increasingly onerous on the tracks with speed ups, destaffing, job loading and reduced job cycles times. Although this is a characteristic of work processes in both plants, the introduction of production of the new Cavalier at Luton, the Vectra, with its reduced cycle times, added another turn to the screw of work intensification. In many cases these work processes could only be achieved through a more aggressive management style. In this respect, a critical contradiction for management was that the latter always has to be an option under a lean production regime. Employee experiences of lean production have been mostly negative with reports of work becoming both more physically and mentally demanding with scant regard for employee expectations of greater training and financial remuneration (Stewart and Garrahan, 1995; Stewart and Wass, forthcoming). Moreover, there is increasing evidence of the detrimental effects of lean production on workers health and safety (Stewart and Wass, 1996).

Capital & Class #61 These employee experiences together with the strategy laid out by the TGWU at plant level (Fisher, 1995) suggest that the significance of the dispute cannot be judged solely in terms of the unions limited success in pursuit of their substantive claim. For sure, the unions achieved less than their memberships had expected having endured a difficult six month mid-winter dispute. The irony for the unions was that this pressure for change had grown as a direct consequence both of their own proactive strategy of direct engagement with the politics and ideology of lean production and workers own experiences of the reality of so-called smarter work. In the assembly plants, the TGWU especially, had been preparing for lean production since the late 1980s to such an extent that before the plant agreements were signed in 1989 and 1992 (at Ellesmere Port and Luton) the shape and content of team meetings were subject to joint regulation. (Martinez Lucio and Weston, 1992, provide a compelling account of some of the background to this in what they term the workplace response strategy). The TGWUs strategy for mobilisation depended upon control of the communication process at shop floor level and their success in this was acknowledged by management. A concerted campaign of education was developed to counter the easy management rhetoric which associated lean production, employee participation and trade union subordination with company success. During the period of initial mobilisation against the politics and ideology of lean production the union organised several dozen training sessions whilst the local leaderships drew the participation of the Labor Notes current in the US. The effect of

Striking Smarter and Harder this successful ideological offensive by the TGWU was to point up the relationship between Vauxhalls lean production strategy, the danger of subordinate trade unionism and workers experiences of harder work. The implementation of the TGWUs campaign in defence of workers collective and individual rights and interests drew managements sting because it has, so far, successfully focused on two key aspects of the change process. The rst related to changes to the technical labour process in which responsibility for product quality was continually pushed down to the shop floor with inadequate financial compensation for workers (Stewart and Wass, forthcoming). Workers also considered that insufficient consideration was given to their requirements for physical and mental recovery from the stresses of working lean. As a consequence of the 1989 and 1992 agreements, the unions established: controls on labour mobility; criteria and limits for the proportion of track relief staff; some conditions, in theory , covering outsourcing; the redenition of spheres of influence as between unions and management, and at both plants an increase in shop steward density. As regards questions relating to JIT, zero waste, low buffers and employee responsibility for aspects of Statistical Process Control, and other critical technical features of lean, the unions acknowledged from the beginning that little could be done to inhibit these. However, it is in respect of the second aspect of the change process that the unions have achieved some notable advances. Away from direct production, the TGWU has been particularly successful in challenging management aims in areas relating to team briengs, continuous improvement/kaizen and

5 the companys broader ideological paraphernalia promoting the benefits to employees of lean production. It was (and remains) a feature of union voracity that management at both plants have been woefully unsuccessful in winning the hearts and minds of the workforce. The battle for hearts and minds is crucial for both management and unions, as each side recognise(d) and it is a ght which leads directly to the second feature of the change process trade union power and autonomy. It is clear that lurking behind the technological and ideological changes owing from lean production there has been another management agenda which requires the success of three interrelated developments. Firstly, the substitution of traditional employee and union regulated gang working with a team leader managed work process. Secondly, the success of this would depend upon the creation of a collaborative system of company-union industrial relations, known within General Motors in the US as Jointism. Thirdly, and as a consequence of the latter, Vauxhall must ensure the development of an employee involvement programme built upon union marginalisation (Vauxhall Luton, 1995). The evidence from this dispute suggests that whatever immediate gains can be claimed by both sides, these tell only a limited part of the story. Management can and do play the investment game, known in the US as Whipsawing, but the threat of disinvestment is a dangerous threat to make in a context where you are trying to convince the labour force of the honourable nature of your intentions. What is known for sure about the 1995-96 dispute is that the TGWU has been remarkably successful in combating a number of social, organisational and industrial

6 relations features of managements offensive. Moreover, on the crucial matter of the ideological campaign for hearts and minds, management for the present is trailing the TGWU.3 Conclusion From the point of view of the industrial and employee relations, managements long term objective since the signing of the Ellesmere Port and Luton plant agreements has been to break the TGWUs shop floor prerogatives from above and below so as to develop GMs policy of Jointism. From above, by involving the union in joint problem solving exercises on everything from corporate strategy to ergonomics and health and safety. From below, by drawing individual workers, via kaizen and team briengs, into a more limited but no less significant process of employee-company jointism. In this fashion, workplace problems would cease to be industrial relations issues around which to mobilise a distinctive trade union agenda, but rather matters of common concern to us all, management and employee alikewe can all solve this problem together. Nevertheless, as the dispute demonstrated, management will increasingly find the going tough provided at least three interrelated features of the recent period continue to be reproduced. Firstly, management seems to be unable to close the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of lean production with

Capital & Class #61 respect to the claims made for employee benets. Secondly, and indelibly tied to this rst point, is the fact that the lean labour process is having a negative effect upon workers physical and emotional lives. Finally, the unions, by virtue of their ideological hegemony continue to outpace management, at present, when it comes to delivering on promises to their members. Of course, it is true that by contrast to trade union experiences at Ford and Rover, plant based union organisations at Vauxhall weathered the 1980s reasonably well. Yet one of the factors which distinguishes the Vauxhall experience is that the TGWU began with a rejectionist position based upon a sharp and essentially correct view of new management practices. The point is that whatever compromises have inevitably been made on outsourcing and staffing levels, these have not, because of the political understanding of lean production at plant level, undermined the union organisation and its hegemony on the shop oor. In other words, early preparation and oppositionism allowed the unions to stay ahead of the game when managements full anti union agenda was revealed. In this sense we can argue that smarter industrial action will flow from the long-term plant level union agendas which have thus far, with some measure of success, responded to the new politics of lean production in the sector.

Notes
1. The breakdown by union was: TGWU 83.1% in favour, 16.9 % against AEEU 72.6% in favour, 27.4% against. 2. After a difficult six months for both workers and unions, there was still a majority, though small, in favour of continuing with the action. The vote in mid-February on Vauxhalls final offer was as follows: 1820 in favour, 1850 against. According to Tony Woodley,

Striking Smarter and Harder

the TGWU National Secretary of the Automotive Group and union chief negotiator [This] ballot has taken place against a background of threats and sustained pressure from Vauxhall management on our members to secure a vote for acceptance of the deal. Despite that, and also despite the fact that members of the AEEU had last week

7
voted by nearly four to one to accept the management offer, our members rejected it. (TGWU News Release, 24/1/96) 3. For a management sponsored interpretation of this at Luton see Hamblin, 1994: 6, who recorded marginal managerial benefits at the level of employee acceptance of the imperatives behind team working under lean production.

References
Electoral Reform Ballot Services (1995) Trade Dispute with Vauxhall Motor Company Including All Matters Arising Out of And in Consequence of the Dispute. Report of Voting of TGWU and AEEU Members, London. Fisher, J. (1995) The Trade Union Response to HRM in the UK: The Case of The TGWU, in Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 5, No. 3. pp.723. Hamblin, D (1994) Vauxhall Luton Plant Team work Report, University of Luton. Martinez Lucio, M. and S. Weston (1992) Human Resource Management and Trade Union Responses: Bringing the Politics of the Workplace back in to the Debate in P. Blyton and P. Turnbull: Reassessing Human Resource Management, Sage, London. Marsden, D., T. Morris, P. Willman and S. Wood (1986) The Car Industry: Labour Relations and Industrial Adjustment, Tavistock, London. Oliver, N (1991) The Dynamics of Just-InTime in New Technology, Work and Employment Vol.6 No.1: 19-27. Oliver, N., D. Jones, R. Delbridge and J. Lowe (1994) Worldwide Manufacturing Competitiveness Study, The Second Lean Enterprise Report, Andersen Consulting. Quality Network Production System (1988) Vauxhall/General Motors. Stewart, P. and P. Garrahan (1995) Employee Responses to New Management Techniques in the Auto Industry, in Work Employment and Society, September, Vol.9 No.3: 517-536. Stewart, P. and V. Wass (1996) Working Harder, Suffering Longer. Interim report prepared for the TGWU on the occupational health and safety consequences of lean production at Rover and Vauxhall Motors. Presented to the TGWU National Industrial Policy Conference, Birmingham, July. __________ (forthcoming) From Embrace and Change to Engage and Change: Trade Union Renewal and New Management Strategies in the UK Automotive Industry. Vauxhall Motors Negotiations Update Issues 1-10 (August 1995-February 1996) __________ (1989) V6 Agreement. The Ellesmere Plant Agreement . __________ (1992) Working Together to Win . The Luton Plant Agreement. Womack, J., D. Jones and D. Roos (1990) The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production, Harper Collins, New York.