It was really hard for me to read that Volvo was sold to the Chinese. It was back in the 1970s and 80s when I was heavily involved with many other social engineers trying to figure out what to do about increasing signs of blue collar alienation. Increasing absenteeism, drug use and alcoholism seemed to be symptoms of increasing alienation from their work. That created, at least in the US and Europe a whole new concern about how work was being done. That lead to a rediscovery of the fact that most if not all mass production jobs were mindless and stupefying. Having spent a large part of my working life in factories this was not news. I enthusiastically supported the “newly” discovered source of worker alienation.
This lead to the establishment of a whole series of work experiments that were designed to give workers a new empowerment. The general idea was to give employees, at the point of production, greater control and responsibility for their assigned tasks. There were self managing work teams that would plan how they would get their work done. ie, At the Philips television assembly plant in Einhoven every morning a group of workers would gather round a large revolving table and decide how they would proceed to assemble television sets. They had no supervision. They would decide how to rotate positions of the assembly so that no one had to be at the same position through the whole shift. That was an example of a self managing work team. My observations and discussions with the employees indicated that it was quiet successful.
The Swede’s were very enthusiastic about the idea of empowering workers. They created a government sponsored “Work Institute” that would have the responsibility to assist in helping to empower employees. The Institute was instrumental in working with Volvo on the creations of a new assembly plant at Kalmar. What they did at Kalmar was to tackle one of the most difficult alienation sights in all manufacturing, the automobile assembly line. ( Probably more than all the sociological studies of the assembly line Chaplin’s movie “Modern Times” had a greater influence in helping us understand the deadly effect of this kind of work.)
The Kalmar plant was a major investment on the part of Volvo to eliminate the deadliness of the line. In some ways similar to what Philips did at Einhoven they created work stations along the line where assembly teams would gather and decide on the division of labor for the final assembly, Upon visiting Kalmar I was impressed by what the Volvo people were trying to do, Unfortunately. competitively I did not believe it would work. I have always hated to admit it but what Henry Ford invented was an amazing machine called the assembly line. It had as its critical component humans who were an integral part of the machine and completely controlled by it. That’s what Volvo really tried very hard to change. I was sad to learn that from a bookkeeping standpoint it just didn’t work.
It is generally acknowledged that the Volvo is a very good automobile. Probably the safest on the road today. Ford tried to make a go of it but that didn’t seem to work either. Now it goes to China where the Industrial Revolution is just booming away as it did here in the 19th and 20th century. The Chinese are pulling out all the stops to catch up with the capitalism of the West. The tragedy of all this catching up is the fact that the planet will be the victim of the geometric increase in pollution, Our poor globe has had enough industrial development as evidenced by all the changes going on. As China and India race to catch up with America and Europe they may just be creating the tipping point for the health of the planet. After that it may just be to late to save it as we know it. All of this was just to say how sorry I am to see Volvo dumped in there with the rest of the high polluters. A very sad end for Volvo.
PS. Back in 1979 I edited a book titled, “American Workers Abroad” MIT Press The book is about American workers working in new experimental workplaces in Europe. The idea was to help US companies to learn some of the lessons of how to empower workers, There were many workplace experiments going on in the US. An interesting review of these experiences can be found in the book, “The New American Workplace” by James O’Toole and Edward Lawler. Society For Human Resource Management
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Bob, as you know I did a lot of joint work with you on what we then called "Quality of Work Life." What that meant was not creature comforts or flex-time, but work that was designed to be developmental of the worker, a learning as well as a productive experience, often with pay based on increasing knowledge of everything having to do with making the product. Teamwork, yes, and sometimes self-managing (I visited a plant with a rotating plant manager--made lots of money, too), but developmental.
So, I've often wondered what it would be like to visit some of those plants with hi-QWL job designs that have lasted 2 or 3 decades or more. What happens to individual workers in such learning, developmental settings over long periods of time? Moreover, what happens in their home and family lives? Do they become better spouses, parents, citizens? Or not? I've long thought there is a book--or at least an article on that. If work can be alienating, as so many have said, can it be positive and developmental? With what impact on and off the job?
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