Why Everyone Does Better When Employees Have a Say in the Workplace

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/why-everyone-does-better-when-employees-have-say-workplace




In manufacturing plants all over the world, both managers and workers have discovered that when employees are involved in workplace decision-making, productivity rises. So in the United States, it made national news when on Feb. 14, 2014 workers at the Volkswagen auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee rejected representation by the United Automobile Workers by a vote 712 to 626.

Unfortunately, the Chattanooga workers said no to just the type of employee involvement in productivity improvement that will be necessary to sustain their jobs going forward. To compete on the world stage, a strong employee voice in the workplace matters.

The UAW’s Chattanooga campaign would have made Volkswagen the very first foreign car company to a have a unionized plant in the U.S. More importantly, a victory for the UAW was a precondition for the creation of a works council at the Chattanooga plant — a form of worker-management plant-level collaboration for improving manufacturing productivity that is a fixture of German industrial relations, but virtually unknown in the U.S. Through information-sharing and problem-solving, the managers and employees on a works council improve product quality, speed up production processes and reduce materials waste. It's a win-win.

If American workers want to ensure the competitiveness of their manufacturing jobs, they should jump at the chance of instituting this type of forward-looking arrangement, one that enables their voice to influence the productivity of the work that they do. A large body of evidence shows that the involvement of workers in enhancing productivity increases both the earnings of workers and the competitiveness of the products that they produce. Our forthcoming book, Corporate Governance, Employee Voice and Work Organization: Sustaining High-Road Jobs in the Automotive Supply Industry (Oxford University Press, 2014), co-authored with Inge Lippert of the Confederation of German Trade Unions and Ulrich Jürgens of Science Center-Berlin, provides fresh evidence of the importance of worker involvement in the productivity improvements that contribute to making their own jobs, and the companies for which they work, competitive on a global scale.

[Kingofalldems]

1. Kick and Rec for the workers

[Populist_Prole]

2. The inertia of the rotten US corporate culture will be HARD to buck though

I'm sure many of us have experienced or heard of companies talking a good game of employee involvement, but it's always just that. It's been that way as long as I've worked too. "Team" this. "Quality" that. Bullshit. They always say they want input from below but when they actually see it they squash it like an ant.