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New Engine Plant Marks a New Deal For Auto Industry
Dave Morse, left, Don Kingery and Kathy Straub examine the new engine plant in August, before it opened.
(By Gary Malerba For The Washington Post)
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"We no longer have this boss-subordinate relationship," Ewasyshyn said.
Gooden put it simply: "They work in groups. They do job rotations. It takes the boredom out of going to work every day doing the same job. It's something we should have done a long time ago."
This isn't the UAW's first attempt to forge a new kind of agreement. It created a novel contract for Saturn workers in 1985. Managers reported to a Saturn board on which both management and UAW members sat, and workers had more say in how the plant operated. The contract was also viewed by many as an exciting venture that would change the state of manufacturing. After Saturn sales slipped, workers last year were convinced that the contract stunted growth, and they went back to a more traditional contract. The famed Saturn line in Spring Hill, Tenn., was among the 12 closings at GM factories announced last month.
Toyota and GM formed a joint venture in 1984 called New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., or NUMMI, at a Fremont, Calif., GM plant that was slated to close. The labor contract at NUMMI, which is still in operation and is considered a major success, was a model for the GEMA contract.
Shaiken said that despite NUMMI's success, it wasn't copied by other plants mainly because of "general inertia and resistance to change." He said GEMA was able to run with it because they were starting from scratch -- and doing so at a point where the auto industry is in "a deep, long-term crisis." And so, he said, the union and management are much more willing to try something new.
Gooden said he had resistance to the new approach at GEMA from local unions that "thought everything was going to be the same" as at other plants.
But he dismissed their balking as simply a refusal to change with the times.
"I told them this was a new age and a new way of doing things. I said, 'Just be patient.' If the people who get hired there like it, it will trickle down to you, too."
