🚀 go-pugleaf

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Just a short follow-up to the message arguing that Japan does not work this
way.  I agree, there are (at least) two ways to skin a cat.  Using
Australian workplace data, I've found two types of workplaces with successful
employee involvement programs, one is the 'disposable workplace' (layoffs,
threats of job loss, and non-union), and the other is what Tom Kochan,
David Levine and others call 'workplace transformation' (job security,
profit sharing, strong unions).  BOTH managerial strategies are associated
with successful programs, but I think most of the economic pressures
on firms today are driving them towards the disposable workplace strategy.

Three qualifications.  First, the association between unions and
a positive or beneficent managerial approach may be peculiar to Australia
(e.g., non-union Hallmark is the only major US corp guaranteeing job
security, GM isn't even if Saturn does).  Second, the Japanese stock
market, already a shambles, is driving ALL their major corps to
downsize (e.g., Nippon Telephone & Telegraph announced last year
it was cutting 30,000 jobs and all the big steel and auto producers
are following suit).  Lifetime employment is not viable there either
in most cases. Third, firms with monopoly power, like Boeing or defense
contractors, are undoubtedly in the best position to provide job
security, and I suspect (and hope) they will take this tack, but it
is not common (e.g., the US's only Deming Award winner, Florida Power
and Light, has already 'downsized' 1/4 of their employees, and the
Deming examiners are returning this year to see how they are doing,
wouldn't want to be there myself...).

Cheers,
Bob Drago
drago@convex.csd.uwm.edu
to be cut