Leer en español Currently, when business people and researchers talk or write about the beginnings of the human relations era in management, the name Hawthorne is invariably mentioned. In the future, when they talk about quality of work life, they will refer to Topeka, Kalmar, and Tarrytown. Each plant’s experience with a quality of work life effort, essentially a structured program to involve workers in decisions affecting how they work, is unique. Each plant had different problems and different reasons for beginning a quality of work life program. Tarrytown, a GM car assembly plant in New York state, is perhaps the plant with the greatest number of people ever to have undergone such a program and is perhaps one that had the most to gain, for it was in a fairly sad economic state when the program began. This is the story of the developing and ongoing quality of work life program at Tarrytown, accented by quotes from the people involved.

Imagine that an executive of one of our largest corporations is told that one of his plant managers wants to spend over $1.6 million on a program that has no guarantee of any return in greater efficiency, higher productivity, or lower costs. Then imagine how he would react if he were told that the union is in on the program up to its ears and that the purpose of the program is referred to as “improving the quality of work life!”

If the reader imagines that the average top corporate manager would say the plant manager had lost his senses and ought to be fired, the reader is probably in the majority. The striking fact, however, is that one particular executive, the head of what is probably the largest division of any manufacturing company in the world (18 plants and almost 100,000 employees) knew just what was going on and approved the idea enthusiastically.

This is the story of the General Motors car assembly plant at Tarrytown, New York. In 1970, the plant was known as having one of the poorest labor relations and production records in GM. In seven years, the plant turned around to become one of the company’s better run sites.

Born out of frustration and desperation, but with a mutual commitment by management and the union to change old ways of dealing with the workers on the shop floor, a quality of work life (QWL) program developed at Tarrytown. “Quality of work life” is a generic phrase that covers a person’s feelings about every dimension of work including economic rewards and benefits, security, working conditions, organizational and interpersonal relationships, and its intrinsic meaning in a person’s life.

For the moment, I will define QWL more specifically as a process by which an organization attempts to unlock the creative potential of its people by involving them in decisions affecting their work lives. A distinguishing characteristic of the process is that its goals are not simply extrinsic, focusing on the improvement of productivity and efficiency per se; they are also intrinsic, regarding what the worker sees as self-fulfilling and self-enhancing ends in themselves.

In recent years, the QWL movement has generated wide-scale interest. Just since 1975, more than 450 articles and books have been written on the subject, and there are at least four national and international study and research centers focusing on quality of work life as such. Scores of industrial enterprises throughout the United States are conducting experiments, usually on a small scale; and in an eight-month world study tour a few years back of more than 50 industrial plants in Japan, Australia, and Europe, I found great interest in “industrial democracy.”

So what is special about the Tarrytown story? First, it has the earmarks of success. Second, it illustrates some underlying principles of successful organizational change that can be applied in a variety of work environments. Third, although a number of promising experiments are going on in many General Motors plants and in other companies, this QWL program has involved more human beings—more than 3,800—than any other I know of. Finally, and this is speculative, I believe that 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.

Tarrytown—the Bad Old Days

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Tarrytown plant suffered from much absenteeism and labor turnover. Operating costs were high. Frustration, fear, and mistrust characterized the relationship between management and labor. At certain times, as many as 2,000 labor grievances were on the docket. As one manager puts it, “Management was always in a defensive posture. We were instructed to go by the book, and we played by the book. The way we solved problems was to use our authority and impose discipline.” The plant general superintendent acknowledges in retrospect, “For reasons we thought valid, we were very secretive in letting the union and the workers know about changes to be introduced or new programs coming down the pike.”

Union officers and committeemen battled constantly with management. As one union officer describes it, “We were always trying to solve yesterday’s problems. There was no trust and everybody was putting out fires. The company’s attitude was to employ a stupid robot with hands and no face.” The union committee chairman describes the situation the way he saw it: “When I walked in each morning I was out to get the personnel director, the committeeman was shooting for the foreman, and the zone committeeman was shooting for the general foreman. Every time a foreman notified a worker that there would be a job change, it resulted in an instant ‘78 (work standards grievance). It was not unusual to have a hundred’ 78s hanging fire, more than 300 discipline cases, and many others.”

Another committeeman adds, “My job was purely political. It was to respond instantly to any complaint or grievance regardless of the merits, and just fight the company. I was expected to jump up and down and scream. Every time a grievance came up, it lit a spark, and the spark brought instant combustion.”

Workers were mad at everyone. They disliked the job itself and the inexorable movement of the high-speed line—56 cars per hour, a minute and a half per operation per defined space. One worker remembers it well, “Finish one job, and you always had another stare you in the face.” Conditions were dirty, crowded, and often noisy. Employees saw their foremen as insensitive dictators, whose operating principle was “If you can’t do the job like I tell you, get out.”

Warnings, disciplinary layoffs, and firings were commonplace. Not only did the workers view the company as an impersonal bureaucratic machine, “They number the parts and they number you,” but also they saw the union itself as a source of frustration, “The committeeman often wrote up a grievance but, because he was so busy putting out fires, he didn’t tell the worker how or whether the grievance was settled. In his frustration, the worker would take it out on the foreman, the committeeman, and the job itself.”

In the words of both union and management representatives, during this period “Tarrytown was a mess.”

Beginnings of change

What turned Tarrytown around? How did it start? Who started it and why?

Because of the high labor turnover, the plant was hiring a large number of young people. The late 1960s was the time of the youth counterculture revolution. It was a time when respect for authority was being questioned. According to the plant manager, “It was during this time that the young people in the plant were demanding some kind of change. They didn’t want to work in this kind of environment. The union didn’t have much control over them, and they certainly were not interested in taking orders from a dictatorial management.”

In April 1971, Tarrytown faced a serious threat. The plant manager saw the need for change, and also an opportunity. He approached some of the key union officers who, though traditionally suspicious of management overtures, listened to him. The union officers remember liking what they heard, “This manager indicated that he wanted to create a philosophy of management different from what had gone on before. He felt there was a better way of doing things.”

The plant manager suggested that if the union was willing to do its part, he would put pressure on his own management people to change their ways. The tough chairman of the grievance committee observed later that “this guy showed right off he had a quality of work life attitude—we didn’t call it that at that time—inside him. He was determined that this attitude should carry right down to the foremen, and allow the men on the line to be men.”

The company decided to stop assembling trucks at Tarrytown and to shuffle the entire layout around. Two departments, Hard Trim and Soft Trim, were to be moved to a renovated area of the former truck line.

At first, the changes were introduced in the usual way. Manufacturing and industrial engineers and technical specialists designed the new layout, developed the charts and blueprints, and planned every move. They then presented their proposals to the supervisors. Two of the production supervisors in Hard Trim, sensing that top plant management was looking for new approaches, asked a question that was to have a profound effect on events to follow:

“Why not ask the workers themselves to get involved in the move? They are experts in their own right. They know as much about trim operations as anyone else.”

The consensus of the Hard Trim management group was that they would involve the workers. The Soft Trim Department followed suit. The union was brought in on the planning and told that management wanted to ask the workers’ advice. Old timers in the union report “wondering about management’s motives. We could remember the times management came up with programs only to find there was an ulterior motive and that in the long run the men could get screwed.” Many supervisors in other departments also doubted the wisdom of fully disclosing the plans.

Nevertheless, the supervisors of the two trim departments insisted not only that plans not be hidden from the workers but also that the latter would have a say in the setup of jobs. Charts and diagrams of the facilities, conveyors, benches, and materials storage areas were drawn up for the workers to look at. Lists were made of the work stations and the personnel to man them. The supervisors were impressed by the outpouring of ideas: “We found they did know a lot about their own operations. They made hundreds of suggestions and we adopted many of them.”

Here was a new concept. The training director observes, “Although it affected only one area of the plant, this was the first time management was communicating with the union and the workers on a challenge for solving future problems and not the usual situation of doing something, waiting for a reaction, then putting out the fires later.” The union echoes the same point: “This demonstrated how important it is to solve problems before they explode. If not solved, then you get the men riled up against everything and everybody.”

Moving the two departments was carried out successfully with remarkably few grievances. The plant easily made its production schedule deadlines. The next year saw the involvement of employees in the complete rearrangement of another major area of the plant, the Chassis Department. The following year a new car model was introduced at Tarrytown.

Labor-management agreement

In 1972, Irving Bluestone, the vice president for the General Motors Department of the United Automobile Workers Union (UAW), made what many consider to be the kick-off speech for the future of the quality of work life movement. Repeated later in different forms, he declared:

“Traditionally management has called upon labor to cooperate in increasing productivity and improving the quality of the product. My view of the other side of the coin is more appropriate; namely, that management should cooperate with the worker to find ways to enhance the dignity of labor and to tap the creative resources in each human being in developing a more satisfying work life, with emphasis on worker participation in the decision-malting process.”1

In 1973, the UAW and GM negotiated a national agreement. In the contract was a brief “letter of agreement” signed by Bluestone and George Morris, head of industrial relations for GM. Both parties committed themselves to establishing formal mechanisms, at least at top levels, for exploring new ways of dealing with the quality of work life. This was the first time QWL was explicitly addressed in any major US. labor-management contract.

The Tarrytown union and management were aware of this new agreement. They had previously established close connections with William Homer of Bluestone’s staff and with James Rae, the top corporate representative in the Organization Development Department. It was only natural that Tarrytown extend its ongoing efforts within the framework of the new agreement. Furthermore, Charles Katko, vice president and general manager of the GM Assembly Division, gave his enthusiastic endorsement to these efforts.

Local issues and grievances, however, faced both parties. In the past, it had not been uncommon for strike action to be taken during contract negotiations. The manager and the union representatives asked themselves, “Isn’t there a better way to do this, to open up some two-way communication, gain some trust?” The union president was quick to recognize “that it was no good to have a ‘love-in’ at the top between the union and management, especially the Personnel Department. We had to stick with our job as union officers. But things were so bad we figured ‘what the hell, we have nothing to lose.’”

The union president’s observation about that period is extremely significant in explaining the process of change that followed:

“We as a union knew that our primary job was to protect the worker and improve his economic life. But times had changed and we began to realize we had a broader obligation, which was to help the workers become more involved in decisions affecting their own jobs, to get their ideas, and to help them to improve the whole quality of life at work beyond the paycheck.”

The negotiations were carried out in the background of another effort on management’s part. Delmar Landen, director of organizational research and development at General Motors, had been independently promoting an organizational development effort for a number of years. These efforts were being carried out in many plants. Professionally trained communication facilitators had been meeting with supervisors and even some work groups to solve problems of interpersonal communication.

What General Motors was attempting to do was like the OD programs that were being started up in many industries and businesses in the United States. But, as with many such programs, there was virtually no union involvement. As the training director put it, “Under the influence of our plant manager, the OD program was having some influence among our managers and supervisors, but still this OD stuff was looked upon by many as a gimmick. It was called the ‘happy people’ program by those who did not understand it” And, of course, because it was not involved, the union was suspicious.

Nevertheless, a new atmosphere of trust between the union and the plant manager was beginning to emerge. Local negotiations were settled without a strike. There was at least a spark of hope that the Tarrytown mess could be cleaned up. Thus the informal efforts at Tarrytown to improve union-management relations and to seek greater involvement of workers in problem solving became “legitimatized” through the national agreement and top level support. Other plants would follow.

The Testing Period

In April 1974, a professional consultant was brought in to involve supervisors and workers in joint training programs for problem solving. Management paid his fees. He talked at length with most of the union officers and committeemen, who report that “we were skeptical at first but we came to trust him. We realized that if we were going to break through the communications barrier on a large scale, we needed a third party.”

The local union officials were somewhat suspicious about “another management trick.” But after talking with Solidarity House (UAW’s headquarters), they agreed to go along. Both parties at the local level discussed what should be done. Both knew it would be a critical test of the previous year’s preliminary attempts to communicate with one another on a different plane. Also, as one union person says, “We came to realize the experiment would not happen overnight.”

Management and the union each selected a coordinator to work with the consultant and with the supervisors, the union, and the workers. The consultant, with the union and the management coordinators, proposed a series of problem-solving training sessions to be held on Saturdays, for eight hours each day. Two supervisors and the committeemen in the Soft Trim Department talked it over with the workers, of whom 34 from two shifts volunteered for the training sessions that were to begin in late September 1974. Management agreed to pay for six hours of the training, and the men volunteered their own time for the remaining two hours.

Top management was very impressed by the ideas being generated from the sessions and by the cooperation from the union. The regular repairmen were especially helpful. Not long after the program began, the workers began developing solutions to problems of water leaks, glass breakage, and molding damage.

Layoff crisis

In November 1974, at the height of the OPEC oil crisis, disaster struck. General Motors shut down Tarrytown’s second shift, and laid off half the work force—2,000 workers. Men on the second shift with high seniority “bumped” hundreds of workers on the first shift. To accommodate the new schedule, management had to rearrange jobs and work loads the entire length of the two miles of main conveyors, feeder conveyors, and work stations. A shock wave reverberated throughout the plant, not just among workers but supervisors as well. Some feared the convulsion would bring on an avalanche of ‘78s—work standards grievances—and all feared that the cutback was an early signal that Tarrytown was being targeted for permanent shutdown. After all, it was one of the oldest plants in General Motors and its past record of performance was not good.

However, the newly developing trust between management and the union had its effects. As the union president puts it, “Everyone got a decent transfer and there were surprisingly few grievances. We didn’t get behind. We didn’t have to catch up on a huge backlog.”

What did suffer was the modest and fragile quality of work life experiment. It was all but abandoned. Many workers who had been part of it were laid off, and new workers “bumping in” had not been exposed to it. Also, a number of persons in the plant were not too disappointed to see it go. Some supervisors, seeing worker participation as a threat to their authority, made wisecracks such as “All they are doing is turning these jobs over to the union.” Some committeemen felt threatened because the workers were going outside the regular political system and joining with representatives of management in solving problems.

In spite of the disruption of plant operations, the quality of work life team, the plant manager, and the union officials were determined not to give up. Reduced to a small group of 12 people during 1975, the team continued to work on water leaks and glass breakage problems. This group’s success as well as that of some others convinced both parties that quality of work life had to continue despite a September 1975 deadline, after which management would no longer foot the bill on overtime.

During this period all parties had time to reflect on past successes as well as failures. The coordinators (one from the union and one from management) had learned a lesson. They had expected too much too soon: “We were frustrated at not seeing things move fast enough. We got in the trap of expecting ‘instant QWL.’ We thought that all you had to do was to design a package and sell it as you would sell a product.”

Also, during this period, the grapevine was carrying a powerful message around the plant that something unusual was going on. The idea of involving workers in decisions spread and by midyear the molding groups were redesigning and setting up their own jobs. Other departments followed later.

At this time everyone agreed that if this program were to be expanded on a larger scale, it would require more careful planning. In 1975, a policy group made up of the plant manager, the production manager, the personnel manager, the union’s top officers, and the two QWL coordinators was formed. The program was structured so that both the union and management could have an advisory group to administer the system and to evaluate the ideas coming up from the problem-solving teams. Everyone agreed that participation was to be entirely voluntary. No one was to be ordered or assigned to any group. Coordinators and others talked with all of the workers in the two departments.

A survey of interest was taken among the 600 workers in the two volunteering departments; 95% of these workers said they wanted in. Because of the large number that wanted to attend, pairs of volunteers from the ranks of the union and management had to be trained as trainers. Toward the middle of the year, a modified program was set up involving 27 off-time hours of instructional work for the 570 people. Four trainers were selected and trained to conduct this program, two from the union and two from management.

A second crisis occurred when the production schedule was increased to a line speed of 60 cars per hour. Total daily output would not be enough to require a second shift to bring back all the laid-off workers. Instead, the company asked that 300 laid-off workers be brought in and that the plant operate on an overtime schedule. Ordinarily the union would object strongly to working overtime when there were still well over 1,000 members out on the street. “But,” as the union president puts it, “we sold the membership on the idea of agreeing to overtime and the criticism was minimal. We told them the survival of the plant was at stake.”

Full capacity

Despite the upheavals at the plant, it seemed that the quality of work life program would survive. Then, a third blow was delivered. Just as 60 workers were completing their sessions, the company announced that Tarrytown was to return to a two-shift operation. For hundreds of those recalled to work, this was good news. Internally, however, it meant the line would have to go through the same musical chair game it had experienced 14 months earlier when the second shift was dropped.

Workers were shuffled around according to seniority and job classification. Shift preferences were granted according to length of service. With a faster line speed than before, the average worker had fewer operations to perform but those he did perform he had to do at a faster pace. In short, because of possible inequities in work loads, conditions were ripe for another wave of work standards grievances. Happily, the union and management were able to work out the work-load problems with a minimum of formal grievances.

But again the small, partially developed QWL program had to be put on ice. The number of recalled workers and newly hired employees was too great, and turnover was too high among the latter for the program to continue as it had been. Capitalizing on the mutual trust that had been slowly building up between them, management and the union agreed to set up an orientation program for newly hired employees—and there were hundreds of them. Such a program was seen as an opportunity to expose new workers to some of the information about plant operations, management functions, the union’s role, and so forth. At one point, the union even suggested that the orientation be done at the union hall, but the idea was dropped.

The orientation program was successful. Some reduction in the ratio of “quits” among the “new hires” was observed. The union president did feel that “we had set a new tone for the new employee and created a better atmosphere in the plant.”

Brave New World

Early the next year, 1977, Tarrytown made the “big commitment.” The QWL effort was to be launched on a plant-wide scale involving approximately 3,800 workers and supervisors. Charles Katko, vice president for the division and UAW’s top official, Irving Bluestone, gave strong signals of support. The plant manager retired in April and was replaced by the production manager. The transition was an easy one because the new manager not only knew every dimension of the program but also had become convinced of its importance.

The policy committee and the quality of work life coordinators went to work. In the spring of 1977, all the top staff personnel, department heads, and production superintendents went through a series of orientation sessions with the coordinators. By June, all middle managers and first-line supervisors (general foreman and foremen) were involved. Thus by the summer of 1977 more than 300 members of Tarrytown management knew about the QWL approach and about the plans for including 3,500 hourly employees. All union committeemen also went through the orientation sessions.

Also, during mid-1977, plans were underway to select and train those people who would eventually conduct the training sessions for the hourly employees. More than 250 workers expressed an interest in becoming trainers. After careful screening and interviewing, 11 were chosen. A similar process was carried out for supervisors, 11 of whom were subsequently selected as trainers, mostly from among foremen.

The 2 coordinators brought the 22 designated trainers together and exposed them to a variety of materials they would use in the training itself. The trainers conducted mock practice sessions which were videotaped so they could discuss their performance. The trainers also shared ideas on how to present information to the workers and on how to get workers to open up with their own ideas for changing their work environment. The latter is at the heart of the quality of work life concept.

The trainers themselves found excitement and challenge in the experience. People from the shop floor worked side by side with members of supervision as equals. At the end of the sessions, the trainers were brought together in the executive dining room for a wrap-up session. The coordinators report that “they were so charged up they were ready to conquer the world!”

Plant-wide program

On September 13, 1977 the program was launched. Each week, 25 different workers (or 50 in all from both shifts) reported to the training rooms on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, for nine hours a day. Those taking the sessions had to be replaced at their work stations by substitutes. Given an average hourly wage rate of more than $7 per attendee and per replacement (for over 3,000 persons), one can begin to get an idea of the magnitude of the costs. Also, for the extra hour above eight hours, the trainees were paid overtime wages.

What was the substance of the sessions themselves? The trainee’s time was allocated to learning three things: first, about the concept of QWL; second, about the plant and the functions of management and the union; third, about problem-solving skills important in effective involvement.

At the outset, the trainers made it clear that the employees were not to use the sessions to solve grievances or to take up labor-management issues covered by the contract itself. The presentation covered a variety of subjects presented in many forms with a heavy stress on participation by the class from the start. The work groups were given a general statement of what quality of work life was all about. The union trainer presented materials illustrating UAW Vice President Bluestone’s famous speech, and the management trainer presented a speech by GM’s Landen stressing that hourly workers were the experts about their own jobs and had much to contribute.

The trainers used printed materials, diagrams, charts, and slides to describe products and model changes, how the plant was laid out, how the production system worked, and what the organizational structures of management and the union are. Time was spent covering safety matters, methods used to measure quality performance, efficiency, and so forth. The work groups were shown how and where they could get any information they wanted about their plant. Special films showed all parts of the plant with a particular worker “conducting the tour” for his part of the operation.

To develop effective problem-solving skills, the trainers presented simulated problems and then asked employees to go through a variety of some experiential exercises. The training content enabled the workers to diagnose themselves, their own behavior, how they appeared in competitive situations, how they handled two-way communications, and how they solved problems. By the final day “the groups themselves are carrying the ball,” as the trainers put it, “with a minimum of guidance and direction from the two trainers.”

Trainers took notes on the ideas generated in the sessions and at the end handed out a questionnaire to each participant. The notes and questionnaires were systematically fed back to the union and management coordinators, who in turn brought the recommendations to the policy committee. The primary mode of feedback to their foremen and fellow workers was by the workers themselves out on the shop floor.

Continuing effort

Seven weeks after the program began in September 1977, just over 350 workers (or 10% of the work force) had been through the training sessions. The program continued through 1978, and by mid-December more than 3,300 workers had taken part.

When all the employees had completed their sessions, the union and management immediately agreed to keep the system on a continuing basis. From late December 1978 through early February 1979, production operations at Tarrytown were closed down to prepare for the introduction of the all-new 1980X model. During the shutdown, a large number of workers were kept on to continue the process.

In preparation for the shift, managers and hourly personnel together evaluated hundreds of anticipated assembly processes. Workers made use of the enthusiasm and skills developed in the earlier problem sessions and talked directly with supervisors and technical people about the best ways of setting up various jobs on the line. What had been stimulated through a formal organized system of training and communication (for workers and supervisors alike) was now being “folded in” to the ongoing planning and implementation process on the floor itself.

In evaluating the formal program, the trainers repeatedly emphasized the difficulties they faced as well as the rewards. Many of the men and women from the shop floor were highly suspicious at the start of the sessions. Some old-timers harbored grudges against management going back for years. Young workers were skeptical. Some of the participants were confused at seeing a union trainer in front of the class with someone from management.

In the early period, the trainers were also nervous in their new roles. Few of them had ever had such an experience before. Many agreed that their impulse was to throw a lot of information at the worker trainee. The trainers found, however, that once the participants opened up, they “threw a lot at us.” Although they understood intellectually that participation is the basic purpose of the QWL program, the trainers had to experience directly the outpouring of ideas, perceptions, and feelings of the participants to comprehend emotionally the dynamics of the involvement process.

But the trainers felt rewarded too. They describe example after example of the workers’ reactions once they let down their guard. One skeptical worker, for example, burst out after the second day, “Jesus Christ! You mean all this information about what’s going on in the plant was available to us? Well, I’m going to use it.” Another worker who had been scrapping with his foreman for years went directly to him after the sessions and said, “Listen, you and I have been butting our heads together for a long time. From now on I just want to be able to talk to you and have you talk to me.” Another worker used his free relief time to drop in on new class sessions.

Other regular activities to keep management and the union informed about new developments parallel the training sessions. Currently, following the plant manager’s regular staff meetings, the personnel director passes on critical information to the shop committee. The safety director meets weekly with each zone committeeman. Top union officials have monthly “rap sessions” with top management staff to discuss future developments, facility alterations, schedule changes, model changes, and other matters requiring advance planning. The chairman of Local 664 and his zone committeemen check in with the personnel director each morning at 7:00 a.m. and go over current or anticipated problems.

After the Dust Settles

What are the measurable results of quality of work life at Tarrytown? Neither the managers nor union representatives want to say much. They argue that to focus on production records or grievance counts “gets to be a numbers game” and is contrary to the original purpose or philosophy of the quality of work life efforts. After all, in launching the program, the Tarrytown plant made no firm promises of “bottom line” results to division executives or anyone else. Getting the process of worker involvement going was a primary goal with its own intrinsic rewards. The organizational benefits followed.

There are, however, some substantial results from the $1.6 million QWL program. The production manager says, for example, “From a strictly production point of view—efficiency and costs—this entire experience has been absolutely positive, and we can’t begin to measure the savings that have taken place because of the hundreds of small problems that were solved on the shop floor before they accumulated into big problems.”

Although not confirmed by management, the union claims that Tarrytown went from one of the poorest plants in its quality performance (inspection counts or dealer complaints) to one of the best among the 18 plants in the division. It reports that absenteeism went from 7¼% to between 2% and 3%. In December 1978, at the end of the training sessions, there were only 32 grievances on the docket. Seven years earlier there had been upward of 2,000 grievances filed. Such substantial changes can hardly be explained by chance.

Does this report on Tarrytown sound unreal or euphoric? Here are the comments of the most powerful union officer in the plant, the chairman of Local 664:

“I’m still skeptical of the whole thing but at least I no longer believe that what’s going on is a ‘love-in’ at Tarrytown. It’s not a fancy gimmick to make people happy. And even though we have barely scratched the surface, I’m absolutely convinced we are on to something. We have a real and very different future. Those guys in the plant are beginning to participate and I mean really participate!”

By May 1979 the Tarrytown plant, with the production of a radically new line of cars, had come through one of the most difficult times in its history. Considering all the complex technical difficulties, the changeover was successful. Production was up to projected line speed. The relationship among management, union, and the workers remained positive in spite of unusual stress conditions generated by such a change.

As the production manager puts it, “Under these conditions, we used to fight the union, the worker, and the car itself. Now we’ve all joined together to fight the car.” Not only were the hourly employees substantially involved in working out thousands of “bugs” in the operations, but plans were already under way to start up QWL orientation sessions with more than 400 new workers hired to meet increased production requirements.

Tarrytown, in short, has proved to itself at least that QWL works.

Learning from Tarrytown

Although the Tarrytown story is, of course, unique, persons responsible for bringing about change in an organization might derive some useful generalizations and important messages from it. (See the insert “Quality of Work Life—Things to Consider” for a list of general observations on quality of work life.)

Quality of Work Life—Things to Consider What generalizations or principles might one derive from the Tarrytown story? The list below combines those of the participants themselves with my own observations about quality of work life experiments here and abroad. The list is not exhaustive. The first six are limited in general to organizations with collective bargaining agreements. The others have more universal applications. 1. For quality of work life to succeed, management must be wholly competent in running the business as a profit-making enterprise. When management lacks organizational competence and adequate technical expertise, no amount of good intentions to improve worker-union-management communication will succeed. Workers will not be willing to become involved knowing management lacks the competence to do anything about their ideas. 2. The union must be strong. The members must trust their leadership, and this trust must exist within the framework of a democratic “political” process. 3. In most instances, management has to be the first party to initiate change, to “hold out the olive branch.” 4. Quality of work life should never be used by either party to circumvent the labor-management agreement The rights, privileges, and obligations of both parties should remain inviolate. Dealing with grievances and disputes can be made easier through quality of work life efforts, but at no time should management give up its right to manage nor the union its right to protect its members on matters related to wages, hours, benefits, and general conditions of employment. 5. Top management and top union officials must take an explicit commitment to support quality of work life. 6. Even with agreement at high levels and demonstrated concern on the part of rank-and-file employees, it is essential that middle management and front-line supervisors (and shop stewards) not only know what is taking place but also feel they have a say in the change process. Supervisors naturally feel threatened by any moves to give subordinates greater power in determining how work is to be performed. Union representatives can perceive unilateral work participation as a threat to their political position. 7. A quality of work life program is unlikely to succeed if management’s intention is to increase productivity by speeding up the individual worker’s work pace or, if it uses the program as such, to reduce the work force through layoffs. Workers will quickly see such actions as unfair exploitation. This is not to say that cost savings from better quality performance, lower absenteeism and turnover. and better production methods should not be an expected consequence of the effort. 8. A program should be voluntary for the participants. 9. Quality of work life should not be initiated with a detailed master plan. It should start on a limited scale focused on the solution of specific problems, however small. It should be flexible. 10. At each step in developing a program, all small bottlenecks or misunderstandings must be talked out and solved on the spot. If set aside simply to get on with the “important” plans, the little misunderstandings can later explode with enough force to destroy the entire program. 11. It is not enough to expose employees to the principles of effective interpersonal communication and problem solving skills. There must be immediate opportunities available for them to use these skills in practical ways right in the job situation itself. Further follow-up action of some kind is necessary to serve as positive reenforcement to the employees. 12. Quality of work life efforts should not be thought of as a “program” with finite ending. There must be a built-in momentum that is dynamic, on-going, and that can continue regardless of changes in the personnel in the organization. Once employees come to believe that they can participate and do in fact become involved in solving problems. the process gains a momentum of its own. There is an implied warning here. Management may have the formal power to drop quality of work life efforts summarily. Union officers may have the political power to scutle such efforts. Both would be acting at their peril for, under quality of work life, the workers will have gained a unique power to influence substantially the quality of their own lives at work. To them there is no turning back.

Bringing about change—any kind of change—is extraordinarily difficult in our modem organizations. It is challenge enough to introduce new machines, computers, management information systems, new organizational structures, and all the bureaucratic paraphernalia required to support our complex production systems. It is even more difficult to organize and stimulate people to accept innovations directed at greater efficiency. Perhaps most difficult of all, as one looks at the quality of work life process and Tarrytown as an example, is for managers, union officials, and even workers themselves to adjust to the idea that certain kinds of changes should be directed toward making life at work more meaningful and not necessarily toward some immediate objective measures of results.

Even when people become committed to this idea, starting the process is not easy. Witness, for example, how long it took to turn the Tarrytown ship around. Look at the roadblocks its people had to overcome: deep-seated antagonisms between management and labor and the impact of changes beyond the control of the organization itself—new facilities, new products, and personnel changes at all levels, especially among hourly workers. Just when the quality of work life efforts gained some momentum, an unanticipated event intervened and the program was stopped dead in its tracks—almost. Indeed, one gets the impression that the only constant was change itself.

Some observations are in order. Developing this climate for change takes extraordinary patience. It takes time. It calls for sustained commitment at all levels. In most of the efforts to change human behavior that I have observed directly, these characteristics are lacking. Managers and leaders are under pressure to change things overnight. They draw up a program, package it, press the authority button, set deadlines, then move. It all sounds so easy, so efficient, so American.

In changing the way Americans work, we have, as the chairman of Local 664 said, “barely scratched the surface.” What went on at Tarrytown was only a beginning. The intrinsic nature of repetitive conveyor-paced jobs has not substantially changed. The commitment to quality of work life is strong at the local level and among some people at division and corporate levels, but it is not universal. Changes in management or new crises could threaten further developments. Nevertheless, a new atmosphere about change and the worker’s role in it is clearly emerging. People feel they have some “say,” some control over their work environment now and in the future.

The Tarrytown story may, however, reflect something important about quality of work life efforts springing up in many other places in the United States. Studies are showing that workers in our large, rationalized industries and businesses are seeking more control over and involvement in the forces affecting their work lives. Due in part to the rising levels of education, changing aspirations, and shifts in values, especially among young people, I believe we are witnessing a quiet revolution in what people expect from work, an expectation that goes beyond the economic and job security issues that led to labor unrest in an earlier day.2

In parts of Europe, the response to this quiet revolution is manifest in broad-scale political efforts on the part of labor and government to gain greater control over the management of the enterprise itself. In the United States, the response is different?3 Workers or their unions have given no indications that they wish t o take over basic management prerogatives. As the Tarrytown story illustrates, what they want is more pragmatic, more immediate, more localized—but no less important.

The challenge to those in positions of power is to become aware of the quiet revolution at the workplace and to find the means t o respond intelligently to these forces for change. What management did at Tarrytown is but one example of the beginnings of an intelligent response.

1. Irving Bluestone, “A Changing View of Union-Management Relationships,” Vital Speeches, December 11, 1976.

2. For recent confirmation based on survey data over a period of 25 years, see M.R. Cooper, B.S. Morgan, P.M. Foley, and L.B. Kaplan, “Changing Employee Values: Deepening Discontent,” HBR January–February 1979, p. 117.

3. For a fuller discussion of the differences between American and European responses to labor today, see Ted Mills’s “Europe’s Industrial Democracy: An American Response,” HBR November–December 1978, p. 143.