Stunning Turnaround at Tarrytown

Workers and bosses cooperate to boost productivity

American-made automobiles last week were again selling like Edsels. Mid-April car sales by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler dropped 32% from the same period a year earlier. Detroit continues to struggle with the dark reputation that it turns out cars inferior to those made by Japanese or West German manufacturers and that American workers are not sufficiently productive. But one Big Three plant belies such notoriety. The General Motors factory in Tarrytown, N.Y., one of the plants where the company assembles its hot-selling front-wheel-drive Chevrolet Citations, has earned the reputation of being perhaps the giant automaker's most efficient assembly facility. Tarrytown's current renown is more surprising because in the early 1970s the 55-year-old plant was infamous for having one of the worst labor-relations and poorest quality records at GM.

The turnaround at Tarrytown grew out of the realization by local management and union representatives that inefficiencies and industrial strife threatened the plant's continued operation. Automakers sometimes use forced plant closings caused by sluggish auto sales to unload a lemon facility. Ford, for example, decided two weeks ago to shut the gates of its huge Mahwah, N. J., plant largely because it had a poor quality record. After Tarrytown lost a truck production facility in 1971, bosses and workers became fearful for their jobs and got together to find better ways to build cars. At first hesitantly but later with enthusiasm, they embarked on an unusual joint experiment to improve work and to tap shop-floor expertise for running the factory.

The setting for the initiative could hardly have been more dismal. Some 7% of the plant's workers were regularly failing to appear for work, and the number of outstanding employee grievances against management totaled 2,000. The result of the confrontation and conflict was sloppy work, rapidly rising dealer complaints, and an unprecedented number of disciplinary and dismissal notices. "Workers and bosses were constantly at each other's throats," recalls Gus Beirne, then general superintendent of the plant. Agrees Larry Sheridan, the former United Auto Workers shop chairman at Tarrytown: "It sure as hell was a battleground."

The first significant payoff from the new mood at the plant came at model changeover time in 1972 and then again the following year. GM management showed workers the proposed changes in the assembly line and invited their comments. Says Beirne: "A lot of good ideas came forward, and we were shown a lot of problems we didn't realize existed. Things we had missed were picked up, and we had time to implement them before the start of the new models."

The cost savings produced by simply sharing information with the shop floor encouraged Tarrytown's executives to move further. In 1972, the plant's supervisors began holding regular meetings with workers on company time to discuss worker complaints and ideas for boosting efficiency. In order to turn the gripe sessions into something more substantive, both sides agreed to bring in an outside consultant to organize worker-participation projects. They chose Sydney Rubinstein, 52, a former blue-collar tool-and-die worker and white-collar engineer, who had become an expert on worker innovation and productivity.

Rubinstein's first breakthrough came in a trial project with Tarrytown's 30 windshield installers. Half of the workers had been disciplined during the previous six months for poor work. During discussions it was revealed that each worker selected a different point around the windshield to begin applying the sealant. One worker explained that he started at the spot where the radio antenna wires emerged from the windshield because "you get a little extra adhesive, a puddle, and that stops leaks." That little trick was new to the other workers, the foreman and the plant engineers. The method was immediately adopted and resulted in a rapid reduction in the number of dealers' complaints. Later, the plant's body-shop workers held informal discussions on welding problems. Within a few months, the percentage of bad welds dropped from 35% to 1.5%. When the small voluntary program of worker participation was expanded to the plant's 3,800 employees, 95% of them took part. The plan eventually cost GM $1.5 million.

As a result of these projects, workers say, they now readily inform supervisors that they would rather discuss problems than knock heads. "The evolution that has taken place is terrific," says Ray Calore, president of the local U.A.W. "There are no longer any hidden-ball tricks. If management has a problem, we sit and discuss it." The U.A.W. insists that job-participation programs like those at Tarrytown are neither a panacea to end all labor disputes nor just a management tool to boost output. But giving workers a greater voice in their job can improve productivity by bringing about declines in grievances, absenteeism and waste.

The benefits of the new attitudes are clear. Since 1976, the Tarrytown plant has turned out high-quality products. There are now only about 30 outstanding worker grievances, while absenteeism has fallen by two-thirds, to 2.5%. Disciplinary orders, firings, worker turnover and breakage all show significant declines. The clear lesson from Tarrytown is that both management and workers can cooperate to their mutual advantage to boost job satisfaction and increase productivity. Says Dartmouth Business Administration Professor Robert H. Guest: "Tarrytown represents in microcosm the beginnings of what may become commonplace in the future--a new collaborative approach on the part of management, unions and workers to improve the quality of life at work in its broadest sense."

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