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By Paul Blyton
-- increased flexibility and higher levels of labour utilization on the shop-floor;
-- lower staffing levels;
-- improved quality; and
-- increased worker commitment and sense of responsibility.
Teamworking may be seen as a logical extension of many of the developments in work organization which have been occurring over the past decade and a half, for example:
-- reductions in demarcations and the introduction of broader job boundaries;
-- lower manning levels;
-- increased worker responsibility for quality; and
-- increased direct communication by management with the workforce in efforts to increase the latter's identification with company goals.
The far-reaching changes in work organization which accompany teamworking, however, make it a more fundamental break with the past than the various related changes witnessed in the steel industry over recent times.
At its most developed, teamworking in steel production involves the integration of former process and maintenance functions into single, multi-purpose teams, responsible for all operations in a particular part of the plant. In the broader development of teamworking, craft restructuring represents an important prior development, for craft functions are only likely to be successfully integrated into production teams if those craft workers are multi-skilled and thus capable of taking responsibility for all aspects of maintenance work within a team's operational area.
To date, teamworking remains a goal rather than a reality both across the majority of the British iron and steel industry in general, and within British Steel in particular. A number of teamworking developments have occurred within BS -- for example, at its Llanwern, Trostre, and Corby plants -- while in other areas, planned teamworking developments have progressed much more slowly than was originally envisaged. However, it seems unlikely that BS management will sanction major investment in plant refurbishment and agree the location of new plant without agreement from the unions that new job structures will accompany any investment. In this sense, the current teamworking initiatives have a significance beyond their present scale.
As is the case elsewhere in manufacturing, the forms which teamworking is taking within BS vary considerably: for example, in terms of the size of teams, and the structure of different job classifications and levels within teams. Yet, despite this variety, a number of common developments and issues can be seen to stem from the introduction of teamworking. A prominent example of teamworking within BS indicates the nature and significance of developments taking place. At BS Llanwern, the galvanizing plant (named "Zodiac") has been operating on a teamworking basis since its inception in 1990. Workers for the Zodiac plant were initially recruited from elsewhere on the Llanwern site by means of an extensive (60 point) selection instrument, designed to measure not only candidates' range of skills but also various attitudes (for example, a willingness to work flexibly). Management were able to establish significantly lower overall manning levels in the new plant by recruiting those workers who could offer a range of skills and were willing to undertake further training to create a self-contained workforce capable of undertaking the full range of process and engineering tasks within the galvanizing plant. That is, it was envisaged that teams would perform not only the production operations but also carry out maintenance checks and minor plant repairs without the support of additional craft workers. Regular job rotation within the teams was seen to be a further important means of developing a broader range of skills and greater worker interchangeability.
A significant number of the Zodiac personnel, particularly those at more senior levels (teams are comprised of Operators and Senior Operators) are ex-craft workers drawn from elsewhere in the Llanwern plant. Thus, not only were the Zodiac teams established without direct reference to the seniority rules prevailing elsewhere in the plant, but in addition many of the senior positions in the Zodiac teams are held by (ex-craft) workers who were not previously part of seniority hierarchies. Likewise, promotion in Zodiac is not governed by seniority rules. Thus, overall, the pattern of work organization within the Zodiac plant represents a marked break with the past in terms of:
-- the lower manning levels established to operate the plant;
-- the integration of ex-craft and ex-process grades into single teams;
-- the selection of workers for team positions and promotion within teams being based on criteria other than seniority; and
-- the responsibilities held within the team for both production and maintenance functions (Blyton and Bacon, 1997: 96).
One of the reasons the local branch of the ISTC union signed the teamworking agreement was that it anticipated management's determination to introduce new work organisation with or without union agreement, and that it was preferable for the union to make as successful an agreement as it was capable of, in these circumstances (ibid.: 97).
-- the greater training required in order for a much smaller workforce to cover a wider range of tasks via a marked broadening of job boundaries;
-- the training requirements of craft restructuring and an increased emphasis on improving maintenance workers' diagnostic skills;
-- an increased emphasis on training to improve product quality via, for example, acquiring skills to perform statistical process control and monitoring of automatic process control equipment;
-- increased training related to the introduction of new technology, such as the widespread computerisation of production and planning systems.
What is particularly significant in this emphasis on training is the greater prominence now being given to the formal training of process workers. Recognised training of process workers is a relatively new phenomenon and marks a shift away from an earlier reliance on on-the-job familiarization secured within seniority-based work crews. In more recent years, on-the-job training has been supplemented by training occurring elsewhere in the works, and outside at local colleges.
Some examples of the training developments within BS illustrate the considerable commitment to training being shown within the company. Among maintenance workers, craft restructuring has major training implications. In the early 1990s, one large integrated site had a budget for craft restructuring which involved 20,000 man days retraining at a cost of £3 million (Blyton, et al., 1993: 155). There are two main aspects to training for craft restructuring. On the one hand, the broadening of craft worker skills is leading to a reorganization of traditional apprenticeship training. Following initiatives on apprentice training at BS Teesside works in the 1980s, a four year apprenticeship has been devised to develop skilled workers capable of operating within the broad discipline areas of mechanical or electrical skills. On the other hand, craft restructuring entails widespread re-training of existing maintenance workers. At one of BS's large integrated sites, for example, this craft re-training took the form of 54 modules: 19 of these related to the single electrical discipline and included modules on areas such as machine theory, transformers, circuit protection, electronic instrumentation, calibration and computer hardware and software. A further 19 modules related to the single mechanical discipline, covering such areas as gearboxes, bearings, pipe work, turning, shaping and drilling, burning, welding and hydraulics. The final 16 modules were common to both disciplines and represent the element of cross-discipline training; these common elements included plant condition monitoring, machine fitting and alignment, basic fitting, plant isolation and some slinging and crane driving. As well as providing additional competencies, this training has also been partly focused on shifting the role of craft activities from a "maintenance by repair" function to a more "diagnostic" one -- an increased emphasis on prevention of breakdowns rather than cure -- through such computerized planning mechanisms as Total Engineering Management System (TEMS).
In relation to process worker training, this has been geared on the one hand to extending worker competence in a broader range of tasks, and on the other to improving awareness of quality-related issues. At one of British Steel's large finishing plant, for example, a competency based training programme has been devised which entails process worker completing five weeks of college based training studying basic principles of metallurgy, chemistry and process technology, together with operational skills of engineering, stock control and technical skills. More generally, BS has undertaken "key task analyses" at various locations to identify the main functions being performed and the skills required to carry the tasks out competently; one outcome of such analyses has been to act as a training plan. In addition, senior operators and team leaders have undergone additional training, not only in task-related areas and safety but also in more man-management aspects such as leadership, communication and motivation (Blyton, et al., 1993).
This overall decline in formal consultation and participation was partly reversed in August 1996 by British Steel's announcement that it was to set up a consultative European Works Council. This also covers the UK (despite this not being required under the European Works Council Directive due to the UK's then opt-out from the social chapter of the Maastricht treaty). In addition to its production facilities in Sweden and Germany, BS has (largely distribution) operations in 11 other European countries outside the UK. The works council consists of 29 members -- 16 from its UK plants, three from Sweden, two from Germany and one each from Holland, France, Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, Norway and Italy. Six national trade union officials are also involved, five from the UK and the other in rotation from recognized unions in the other European countries involved. The council will be chaired by British Steel's chief executive and will meet at least twice a year. However, in its initial announcement, the company made it clear that, "under no circumstance [will the council become involved in or discuss] any issues relating to collective bargaining or negotiations within group undertakings" (quoted in the Financial Times, 1 Aug. 1996). Rather, the works council's agenda will include broad strategy, manpower and employment, business reorganisation and areas such as health and safety and the environment where these issues have a "transnational impact".
At a more local level, an increased emphasis within the company on improving quality (see below) has also led to a greater level of communication between local management and workforce on production-related issues. At the same time, despite these various developments, it remains evident that current levels of worker and union consultation are significantly less than existed prior to the 1980s, and more generally reflects a reduced trade union role in company decision-making.
Following the 1980 steel strike, however, this system of industrial relations underwent substantial change: in particular a shift of the main focus of union-management relations away from national level. Following privatization in 1988, BS ended national pay awards completely and devolved pay and conditions bargaining to the level of the individual businesses (Strip, General, Stainless and Diversified Products), with single table bargaining for pay and conditions replacing the previous separate pay bargaining with the different unions separately.
However, rather than this shift from national to business level bargaining, the most significant development in union-management relations has been the increased emphasis on plant level agreements. Central to this has been the introduction of a works lump sum bonus (LSB) scheme which links a significant proportion of earnings to achieved performance. This LSB has been central to the achievement of management's restructuring programme, for local agreements and LSB payments were tied not only to plant performance (including output and quality) but also to the acceptance of change by the workforce, including manpower reductions, the introduction of subcontractors, alterations to work practices and technical change.
This linkage of wage payments to agreed changes significantly eased management's task of effecting restructuring within the steel plants. For example, it enabled management to define job losses and changes in working arrangements as issues for local agreement, thereby making any national trade union campaigns more difficult to organise and sustain. Further, by making the LSB negotiations multi-union, this reduced the scope for any independent action by single trade unions. With LSB payments worth up to 18% of earnings, these local agreements became a key source of financial improvement for steelworkers from the 1980s onwards. Moreover, BS management made the payment of any business level pay award dependent on subsequent local agreements being reached within a six week time "window" (Avis, 1990). Failure to reach agreement locally in that time would result in the loss of any back pay to the date of the business agreement. Thus local and business pay improvements were made to hinge on the acceptance of both performance improvements and various work-related and manpower changes at local level.
Until now, the main basis of union representation of shop-floor workers in the steel industry has centred on separate unions for the semi-skilled process workers (most of whom are represented by the ISTC) and the skilled maintenance workers (largely represented by the AEEU). Periodically in the past, relations between craft and process unions in the industry have been far from cordial. However, the growth of teamworking, and in particular the integration of ex-craft and ex-process workers into single teams (see above) potentially undermines the basis of separate union representation and creates the conditions for single union representation on the shop-floor. Further, if teamworking developments in the future are accompanied by management recognizing only one union -- a distinct possibility where teamworking is associated with newly-commissioned plant where there is no pre-existing trade union organization -- it is not necessarily the case that the most prominent union in the industry (the ISTC) will necessarily be the one with whom the single union recognition is established. Examples elsewhere -- for example in the vehicle assembly industry in the UK -- have demonstrated how management can choose to recognize single unions other than the numerically largest in the industry.
