As our community winds through this holiday season, we should recognize how Bath Iron Works’ management and Local S6 union succeeded in reaching a settlement on a fair contract in recent years. However, there still remain stark differences between union and management that hinder the shipyard’s overall prosperity. Union workers are still experiencing a lack of trust in the company’s management, and these issues need to be resolved.
It is extremely important that BIW’s management and workforce find common ground and a viable way to work together; without cooperation and reconciliation between the two sides, the shipyard’s financial future remains constrained. In America’s capitalistic economy, all companies must maintain an ongoing level of profitability in order to keep their businesses alive. If a company continually fails to generate profits, it will have to shut down over time. The key to BIW’s profitability lies in its ability to generate productivity. The more productive the company is, the more it can reduce costs and thereby generate more profits.
Q: Who controls productivity at Bath Iron Works?
A: The union labor force.
The reason why the Local S6 union (and not management) controls productivity is because it is essentially impossible for a supervisor or manager to fire a worker due to lack of productivity. Longstanding rules – which were originally intended to protect workers’ rights and which both union and management signed onto – require that a worker who has been written up for low productivity be allowed to have adequate oversight and protection from a union steward in order to withstand the attempts by the supervisor to test the worker’s ability to perform his/her daily tasks. This ensures that the willing worker will succeed in passing the test.
Therefore, in order for the shipyard to obtain the strongest levels of productivity from its workforce, it is incumbent upon management and supervision to communicate with the workforce in the most honest, fair-minded and conciliatory way possible. Again, it is the union workforce that effectively controls the productivity – and profitability – of the entire shipyard. So, the best way for management to harmonize and get along with the labor force is by being honest and straight forward with all of the workers. After all, a more trusting labor force is a more productive labor force.
In 1984, BIW’s senior management attempted to cut costs in the labor force by proposing that the workers sign a contract that would have reduced their benefits while freezing their wages. This proposal was presented because the costs of constructing commercial (not Navy) ships had been continually exceeding the income that those commercial contracts generated. The union workers believed they were being told that, if they refused to sign onto those proposed reductions, future construction contracts for the shipyard would be jeopardized. The union flatly rejected the contract.
Soon after, BIW received a contract to begin constructing new Navy ships. This caused widespread anger throughout the union workforce because the workers believed senior management had lied to them. Consequently, a labor strike ensued and was followed by a perpetual work slowdown by the labor force that lasted more than 35 years. In xenophobic fashion, senior management stubbornly denied there was a morale problem within the labor force throughout this entire 35-year period. Only in the last few years have the union and management finally begun to heal their differences.
The successful healing between the two sides will happen only when BIW’s senior management can restore trust in the workforce by being completely honest and transparent with the workers. The U.S. Navy knows how skilled, intelligent and productive BIW’s workforce truly is, and the Navy fully appreciates the quality, safety, care, speed and professionalism with which the union workers build their ships. All BIW’s management needs to do in order to keep this positive work environment intact is to treat the union labor force with decency, respect, conciliation … and total honesty.
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