GM LORDSTOWN Fab plant workers try team concept

Making teams work will help the plant save jobs, a union official says.
By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
LORDSTOWN -- The 2,200 hourly workers at General Motors' fabricating plant here have become quite good at stamping out car parts, but now they are being asked to forge a new way of running the plant.
The team concept -- where small groups of workers rotate jobs and confer with each other to solve production problems -- has moved through much of the auto industry and now is on the doorstep at the Lordstown plant.
Training of the first group of workers began last Monday and will continue with others in coming weeks.
The reaction of workers, both hourly and salaried, is critical to the plant's future, said Ken Padgett, shop chairman of United Auto Workers Local 1714.
GM wants to invest in plants that are using the team concept successfully, and other plants already have been using teams for years, said Padgett, who took over the job as the local's lead negotiator in June.
A lot to prove
While GM decided last year to spend $550 million to upgrade its Lordstown complex, the fabricating plant still has a lot to prove to the corporation, he said.
GM has committed only to using the fabricating plant to supply metal parts for the Cobalt, which will be a new small car built at the adjacent assembly plant, Padgett said. Now, the fabricating plant also makes parts for other assembly plants around the country, so fewer workers would be needed if that work is eliminated.
Padgett is confident, however, that the teams will succeed, productivity and quality at the plant will improve, and GM will not take away work.
"We want to be the best team plant in GM. If we are, GM will call us to take work for them. There are people that don't think Lordstown is going to do that. We're going to surprise them," he added.
For 10 years, GM has been talking about having the fabricating plant supply only its neighboring assembly plant, but it hasn't happened yet, he said.
The plant can continue to keep its work with other plants by using the team concept to move to the top of GM's quality and productivity rankings, he said. It ranks near the top in some measurements but toward the bottom in others, he said.
Mary Irby, a GM spokeswoman, said plant officials did not want to comment on the start of teams or future staffing levels.
Work force reduction
Even if the fabricating plant retains its business with other assembly plants, the work force at the plant will be reduced by the new equipment being installed, Padgett said. This is a predictable outcome in all manufacturing upgrades, Padgett said.
Better part designs and improved production methods allow parts to be stamped with fewer hits of a press. With less stamping, fewer workers are needed.
Padgett wouldn't say, however, where he thinks the staffing level will be after the renovation. About 1,000 of the local's members will have 30 years and be eligible to retire next year with full benefits, but Padgett wouldn't say how many he expects to leave.
Reductions also are coming at the assembly plant, which employs about 4,100 hourly workers. GM is projecting 2,800 hourly workers will be needed to make the new car, said Ben Strickland, shop chairman of United Auto Workers Local 1112.
He said, however, that the projection could rise by the time production starts next fall. When the plant was last redesigned in 1994, GM needed several hundred more workers than it projected, he said.
Like the fabricating plant, fewer workers are needed at the assembly plant because of a better engineered car and production process. GM also is calling for a 12 percent reduction in line speed, Strickland said.
The team concept has been in place for years at the assembly plant and has helped workers improve operations and quality, he said.
Padgett, who has been a union official for 21 years, said Local 1714 resisted previous efforts at installing teams at the fabricating plant because it didn't think the management atmosphere was right.
Teams will work only if they are given control to make changes, he said. "It requires both parties to make it work."
The union is prepared to give the team concept its best effort now, however, because it's the only way to have a role in the GM system, he said. The teams were part of a new local contract that GM and the union negotiated in 2001. The contract is just taking effect, but GM required it be negotiated in advance of it agreeing to a plant renovation.
Padgett said he's hopeful that teams will be given the authority they need to make changes. He added, however, that divisions between managers and hourly workers have to be eliminated to have a true team environment. Eliminating the separate management and union parking lots would be a good start, he said.
The key to teams is changing the way managers and workers view jobs on the line, he said. Workers no longer are just told what to do and perform it mindlessly, he said.
With teams, they work together to find ways for the line to run better and produce better quality, he said.
"The key is to pass along no defects," Padgett said.
Job classifications
A rub for union members, however, is that the need for many separate job classifications disappears as workers share responsibility for an area, he continued.
The new contract reduced job classifications so workers can rotate among jobs within their team. Some classifications were eliminated so press operators would have more control over maintaining their equipment.
Padgett said one of his tasks is to convince workers with high seniority that the new system makes sense. These people have worked their way up to certain jobs, such as an inspector, that are less physically demanding than others, and now are being asked to be a press operator or a stacker as well. They also are asked to help younger workers learn to do the inspector job which had been theirs.
There are advantages for workers, however, he said. By rotating jobs, for example, they are less likely to suffer from repetitive motion injuries, he said. Workers also have the ability to redesign jobs so that they are less likely to get injured, he said.
Not all the workers are convinced that these changes are for the best, Padgett said. He added, however, that resistance is normal with any big change, so he is dedicating much of his day to meeting with workers on all three shifts.
His message is that the changes will help workers improve their jobs and improve the plant so it can become the best of GM's 18 metal stamping plants.
"Getting that message to the workers in the plant, getting out that vision, is the task at hand," he said.