Cartoon by: cartoonwork@carolsim.com
Essentially, who actually benefits from lean?
There is no evidence that I can see, that employees have in any way benefited from the Lean deal, only the opposite can be said.
It is true that employers will point to profit margins and competition as indicators of how well the company is performing and hence greater job security, but in real terms this is only a short term benefit, in the long term employees find themselves faced with increased work tempo, curious shift working arrangements and ever higher targets as well as other stress related issues.
Is there any evidence that workers are financially better off? That workers have had a good deal?
In the US are the jobs that have been bought out in the auto industry been replaced, like for like?
Are new workers protected with a decent pension plan? Do they have a good family health plan?
Questions that must be asked and questions that are rarely asked.
Workers have always faced changes at work in one form or another and have largely adjusted to these changes without much fuss or problem, but the push to do more with less is growing day by day and the loser will be the worker, worked until too tired or broken to continue and will either end up taking an early retirement package or voluntary redundancy package in order to escape the rigours of the new work environment.
I heard today on the radio that the two Japanese transplant auto firms in the UK make the most efficient and reliable cars in the UK, they also have the highest turnover of labour, broken down human, reliable car.
I am not putting forward any sort of case for halting progress for employers, what I am trying to say is that the cost does not have to be a human one, by all means make the best product, give the best service etc. but it must all end somewhere! There must be some balance, some way of achieving what they employer would like in a better way.
In the UK there is a move for workers to work until 70 years of age!!!!
I can’t imagine how a worker on one of todays Lean Production lines, or working in one of our Lean Prouctin workplaces, could possibly achieve this, whilst it may be true that people are indeed living longer, are they also having a good quality of life in these extra years?
After a lifetime of work, workers deserve better than this.
Mostly the changes that the big companies have achieved have been on the back of threats to job security and such like and use this spectre of plant closure on a constant basis.
Do you have any experience of this?
Has your health suffered?
Has the health of your family suffered?
