TERESA HAYTER looks at how the management techniques of 'Japanisation' are being deployed in the car industry. BY 1992, the bulk of car production at Rover's Cowley plant in Oxford will end. Unless a new model is brought in, the plant could close altogether.
Cowley jobs will have declined from 10,000 in 1988. Some of Cowley's work will almost certainly go to the new Honda-Rover plant being built in Swindon on a greenfield site.
The plant will subiect to the new 'Japanese' management techniques. Honda intends that eventually 2000 workers will produce 100,000 cars a year - many fewer jobs per car than at Cowley.
Copied
Whatever the rhetoric, these new managementtechniques - pioneered in Japan but copied by increasing numbers of British and other firms, aim to cut jobs through speed-up. The 'best' Japanese-copying firms require half the number of workerhours per car than the European average.
The adoption of the new techniNo. 1 May 1, 1991 FILMS ques is at an early stage in Britain. But Japanisation hit the US earlier. A much publicised book by the Massachusetts Technology hails the new system as 'Lean Production'.
From the other side, the rank and file union publication Labor Notes calls them 'Management by Stress'.
Labor Notes has studied a series of plants where the so-called team concept has been applied. During the 1980s the three big US can manufacturers (Ford, General Motors and Chrysler) threatened their workers with closure if they did not accept it. Most of them did.
As well as the threat of closure, US management used a lot of rhetoric to get acceptance of the team concept. Workers, they said, would be given more respect. They would have a say in their own jobs. The system would be based on mutual respect and commitment to common goals. Workers and management would eat in the same canteens, park in the same car park and even wear the same uniforms.
Union support
The national leadership of the United Auto Workers (UAW) actively supported the team concept. But the workers won over to it so found out what it was about.
It meant workers had to constantly promote kaizan or 'constant improvement. This means the workers themselves suggesting how Directed by KEN LOACH, written by BILL JESSE Reviewed by Sean Tunney RIFF-RAFF is a state of the nation address.
Stevie has left Scotland to find work in the big city. He's demolishing a hospital to build luxury flats. He sees needless death on the job, followed by sackings of those organising to prevent others. to load more work on to some jobs so others could be eliminated. They had to 'improve' themselves and their fellow-workers out of Each job itself was minutely scrutinised and routinised. Each cycle must be performed exactly the same way every 60 seconds. the team concept turned out to be a vicious system of industrial dictatorship.
In Britain, Ford and General Motors are beginning to transfer the lessons the lessons they have leamt in the USA to their British plants.
Closure
At the Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port senior stewards were threatened with closure and then taken to General Motors plants in the US to see what is expected of them. They decided they had no alternative but to negotiate the best team concept deal they could.
Ford workers in Britain have been subject to changes explicitly called 'after Japan'.
Once Nissan, Toyota and Honda plants are open in Britain, the pressures on other car plants will intensify. It threatens to massively weaken trade union organisation in the British car industry one-legged cat to bury a turd on a frozen pond.
The precarious life of false names combined with the constant threat of the P45 is deftly exposed. Despite this, the film possibly over-romanticises the class camaraderie that this existence produces.
All the workers take a crack at each other, but are quick to help each other out when needed. Black workers live in harmony with the whites, free from racist attacks.
Inevitably, such subject matter invites comparisons American workers, Japanese methods: designing for Nissan In San Diego Already at the Nissan plant in Sunderland, with the team concept and the AEU negotiating a single-union deal, the role of trade unionism is almost non-existent.
Honda has an engine plant in Swindon employing 500 people. There is no union and Honda seems intent on keeping them out. The workforce is extremely young, and workers' co-operation is secured through a combination of sticks and carrots.
Compulsory
There is compulsory overtime is production schedules are not met; obs for life; and opportunities for promotion for those who show enthusiasm for speed up. Management and workers wear the same green hats and white overalls, which makes it easier, managers say, for former thankful that Columbia Pictures didn't make this gem as originally planned.
Columbia's loss saved the spectacle of Hollywood actors Dick Van Dyking their way through the British class struggle.
Instead Channel 4 agreed to finance Loach's 'documentary style reading of the script which suits its gritty realism perfectly. Loach manages to weave the serious and the comic to produce a socialist parable and a great film. Go see it. accountants and salesmen to fill gaps on the production line.
In Oxford, where we are faced with the substitution of Honda jobs for Cowley jobs, we want to spread the word about what Japanisation means. The Oxford Motor Industry Research Project has held a one-day meeting on the topic, with convenors and shop stewards from many car plants nation-wide. We hope that many more will follow. There is a vital need to build resistance nationally and internationally.
*The proceedings of the research Project Conference will be available soon. Write to: Secretary, Publications, School of Planning, Oxford Polytechnic, Gipsy lane, Oxford. Teresa Hayter is the author of Aid as Imperialism and other works on third world economics.
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