PAINLESS AUTOMATION

It's Not What Is Done but How

THE biggest scare word in the lexicon of unionism is automation.

To many a union orator, automation is a sinister business for eliminating jobs. In the current steel dispute (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) the problem of increased efficiency through automation and job changes is the chief block to a settlement. But is automation the painful process for workers that is often pictured? Last week there were growing signs that U.S. industry is meeting the problems of automation in an enlightened way.

In Chicago, Armour & Co. announced the selection of President Clark Kerr of the University of California to head up a company-union automation committee. Under a new contract, Armour contributes 1-c- per cwt. of meat processed to a special automation fund. With the money the committee will study and recommend ways to retrain and relocate workers laid off as a result of the introduction of new machines. Says Kerr: "I think there will be many more committees such as this one. We will see a new pattern of collective bargaining."

To many U.S. employers the key to harmonious automation lies in preplanning, letting the union and employees know about laborsaving changes before they take place. National Biscuit Co. faced the tough task of explaining why it had to shut down two old bakeries, build a new highly automated one in Chicago. It set up a scale model, invited comment from employees on how to make the plant better. Soon after the new plant began operating, Nabisco's share of the market so expanded that employment rose to 2,400, a third more than the two old plants combined. Says a union official: "The company has to improve if it is going to stay competitive, and automation is the only way it can be done. Besides, a short man used to rupture himself throwing around those 75 pounds of dough."

Automation without strife is not a matter of what management does but how management does it. In the auto industry, Autoworkers President Walter Reuther early took the position: "We do not oppose the introduction of more efficient technology. We do insist, however, that a modicum of social responsibility be exercised in its introduction." Taking Reuther at his word, the auto companies in 1958 put in their contract provisions for early retirement as well as severance pay when machines displace workers. The Big Three also gave displaced workers first crack at new automated jobs, and Ford eliminated the 27-year age ceiling on in-plant trainees preparing for top skilled jobs; it permits a third of each incoming class to be made up of older workers in danger of being automated out of their jobs.

One big way management can ease the pains of automation is to make sure that cost savings are quickly translated into prices that substantially increase volume, thus avoiding the need of layoffs. Thompson Ramo Wooldridge's auto valve division at Cleveland is now so fully automated that men in white coats man the control panels that feed instructions electronically to unmanned lathes and other machines. But what the company has done has so expanded sales that before a production worker had to be laid off, another job turned up elsewhere.

Sometimes there is no escaping a big cut in jobs due to automation, especially when an entire plant has to be abandoned for a newer one in another city. Even the offer of jobs at the new plant fails to win many takers because most employees do not want to move. International Harvester faced this at its Auburn, N.Y. plant. To ease the blow, it paid pensions and severance pay to many workers, turned its industrial-relations office into a job-hunting agency. As a final gesture, it sold the plant to Auburn for $1. The town in turn advertised for new small businesses.

Management can contribute to a clearer understanding of automation by making a distinction between the effects of mechanization and other forms of modernization that also result in labor saving. Harvard Business School Professor James R. Bright recently studied 13 U.S. corporations, found automation was only one of five factors ranging from product streamlining to better plant layouts that influenced employment. To blame all labor saving on machinery, said Bright, is "gross oversimplification." More and more managers are beginning to realize that in all great social changes, methods are almost as important as goals. Says International Business Machines' T. J. Watson Jr.: "An employee who has invested a share of his work life in a company's business and who has performed competently in his job is entitled to every consideration we can give him should he find himself affected by technological advance." Once that is clearly understood, the boulders blocking management's automative path will turn out to be pebbles.

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