TORONTO - Employee-management "teams" have become a feature of many workplaces. Bosses claim that by developing close collaboration between workers and management, they can improve the work environment, product quality, and be more competitive in the "new global economy."

At the Ford Electronics plant in Markham, Ontario, where I work, the team system is an integral part of how management runs the factory. Banners and plaques displaying various business awards won by the company adorn the walls. A company news magazine is widely distributed. "White boards" that lay out monthly goals for each department stand adjacent to each product line.

The 1,600 production workers are required to attend weekly one-hour team meetings to discuss quality, machine efficiency, attendance, and housekeeping, and to collectively "problem-solve." A suggestion program rewards workers with points exchangeable for goods chosen from a catalog. Volunteers are sought to do monthly white board presentations on each product line in front of an audience of co-workers and top management.

Three officers of International Association of Machinists (IAM) Lodge 2113 sit with management representatives on a Plant Joint Steering Committee, which oversees the "teams" program.

Our union contract expired January 13. Within a few weeks negotiations broke off as the company insisted on numerous concessions. Ford wanted a four-year wage freeze, reduction in benefits, introduction of part-time nonunion workers, and important changes in work schedules, including "flexible" start times for all shifts.

Unsigned leaflets by workers previously trained in employee "empow-erment" began to circulate in the plant, informing everyone that the company was stockpiling, and urging workers to stop working overtime. Up to then, overtime was the norm on many lines. (Because of "just-in-time" inventory and shipping methods, weekend overtime is needed to supply auto assembly plants in Canada and in the United States on six-day production schedules.) Within a few days, workers on the shop floor began to boycott weekend overtime. The boycott soon spread to weekdays as well. The majority of union members are women. Thirty-eight languages are spoken in the plant. The local, which has existed for 30 years, has never taken strike action.

Over the next four weeks, workers united behind a work-to- rule campaign aimed at forcing the corporation to withdraw the concessions and share some of the record $50 million profit it made at that plant alone in the last year. Most workers felt that if we didn't take a stand now, we wouldn't get another chance when the economy gets worse.

Negotiations resumed, but as the supply of some products began to run critically low, threatening to shut down assembly plants in the United States, the company unsuccessfully tried to get union officials to call off the boycott. Estimates of the number of workers that stayed home each weekend ranged from 90 percent to 98 percent of the union. At the same time, worker participation in teams fell to an all-time low, as workers began to identify more with the union than with the Ford "family."

Confidence in the effectiveness of union power and solidarity grew. On February 24, now referred to as "Black Friday," hundreds of us on all three shifts filed into the plant dressed in black. In the face of this union solidarity, and just as union negotiators were preparing to walk out again, the company withdrew all its concession demands. A week later, a union contract was ratified by 89 percent of the almost 700 members present. The new contract contained a 13 percent wage increase over the three-year life of the contract. The company nearly doubled its contributions to the pension plan and other benefits were slightly improved.

Our contract fight showed that the only effective tool for defending our interests is to use union power. Out of this fight the union came out stronger.

Sylvie Charbin is a member of IAM Lodge 2113 at Ford Electronics.  
 
 
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