O F F I C E R S'

R E P O R T

2004



 


36th IAMAW
Grand Lodge
Convention


Grand Lodge Representative Jim Reid; Director Don Kennedy; Grand Lodge Representative Bruce Olsson and Cindy Boccucci, Secretary.

HPWO

The mission of the HPWO Partnerships Department is to support labor-management change efforts which help IAM-represented sites convert from traditional relationships to full-partnership High Performance Work Organizations.

As part of this mission, department staff help labor-management partners develop a strategy to save and create jobs and grow businesses. In order for HPWO Partnerships to succeed, management and labor at all levels of the organization must support workplace change.

By working together, the partners at IAM-represented workplaces can be successful in a highly competitive global marketplace.When the partners agree to implement a full-partnership, the relationship leads to success in the marketplace and both salaried and hourly employees find their work more rewarding.

The HPWO Partnerships process is a proactive alternative to management driven workplace change initiatives and “employee involvement” programs. These “flavor of the month” programs were known by a variety of acronyms and slogans from quality circles to team concepts to total quality management. Allegedly designed to increase productivity, and empower workers but, more often than not, these programs reduced employment levels and served as a management ploy with which to carry out a predetermined strategy to extract concessions, shed employees, and downsize bargaining units.

The implementation of a full-partnership HPWO requires a commitment by labor and management to design and create together a new work system. Part of this commitment is to develop strategies to grow the business, to cost out accurately workplace activities, and to improve the work process.

In a partnership, the employees closest to the actual design and production of a product or the delivery of a service decide the best methods for producing, maintaining, and improving that product or service. With this commitment in place, the partners create a structure through which the employees use consensus decision-making, at the appropriate level of the organization, to make those decisions which determine the vital functions of the workplace.

The partners then create a matrix of shared decision-making. This matrix identifies workplace decisions that must be made and the appropriate level of the partnership where responsibility for making that decision will be located.


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