Page 80 - Part One of a Two-Part Story: We Worked for General Instruments
Published by Ronald Caplan on 1988/8/1 (153 reads)Page 79 - Part One of a Two-Part Story: We Worked for General Instruments
Page 81 - Part One of a Two-Part Story: We Worked for General Instruments
new training period would start for that person that just came on. And so on and so on and so on. (The government-paid train? ing....) It lasted for about a year. (So it wasn't something that went on for the 6 or 7 years.) Oh no, no. After that initial year went by, then we had our own training set-ups in the plant, just as we did in any other plant. The company paid for that. (As I understand it, of those trained, only about a third would actually get a job.) Lots of them wouldn't even come to work as a regular employee. There was a turnover there going on constantly, constantly. Peo? ple were quitting. It was a type of work that was completely unknown to this area. And when you told a person who came to train on this, that when you are trained, you should be able to do 450 of this opera? tion, on this continuous line of maybe 35 people, and so on--where the cycle of work was very small--it was not a real hard training to get accustomed to. Let's say it was not a hard learning job. But there was the speed of assembly. The speed of passing that product from one person to the other, or putting it on the conveyor belt and let? ting it go down to the next person. Now when persons unknown (to this kind of work)--let's say, not accustomed to working in this type of atmosphere--heard that they were going to have to do 450 pieces in an hour--this was absolutely unheard of. They were completely amazed. And said, "You guys got to be a bunch of slave drivers. You've got to be out of your mind. Nobody can do Keddy's Sydney Hotel 600 King's Rd., Sydney, N. S. KEDDY'S 218 ROOMS Air Conditioned Colour Cable TV Licensed Dining Daily Features Restaurant Hours: 7 A.M. - 2 P.M. / 5 P.M. -10 P.M. Coffee Shop Hours: 6 A.M. - MIDNIGHT Featuring Our Indoor Recreation Facility - ''Pool ? Sauna ? Whirlpool Bath ? Oasis Pool Bar o Games Machines ENTERTRINMENT & DRNCING NIGHTLY RT lUORV'S LOUNGE For Reservations Phone 539-1140 Toll Free Reservations Phone 1-800-561-7666 400," and this, and blah blah blah. Well, the cycle of work was such that it could be done. (Were you, then, training the people, and were they able to do this?) Oh, definitely. The work force that we had here in Sydney, in the General Instruments plant, was as good as any plant that I had ever worked in in North America. Once these people got over the fear of not being able to do it because it was "impossible"--which it wasn't--then they were a work force that I would have put up against any work force that I had in the 4 or 5 plants that I had previously worked in. So what we did in most instances, as much as we could: we brought in people from plants, like the Joliet, Illinois plant, or the Chickopee, Massachusetts plant, who were accustomed to doing this job, to dem? onstrate the fact that it could be done, without killing yourself. And then is when we had the greatest success in training these people. Because it wasn't so hard to train a person to do the job. But it was hard to get the thought out of their mind that it was completely impossible. (You seem to feel they resisted assembly- line work because they had never done it.) Well, they used to equate working to the stories that their parents, their brothers, and their grandparents told about the mines. That was the work ethic that they knew. Or the work ethic in the steel compa? ny. That was the work ethic that they knew. (What kind of work ethic was that?) Well, let me just tell you a little story. We opened a cafeteria that we had to feed in about 4 shifts, when we were going. There were 4 shifts for your morning break, 4 shifts for your lunch, 4 shifts for your afternoon break, and so on. So we had a little traffic problem going on there. You must realize that. But about the first day that the cafeteria opened up, there were people sitting--not on chairs, in by the tables in the cafeteria--but they were sit? ting along the wall on the outside of the cafeteria. They had, let's say, got their sandwich and their pop or their beverage, whatever it was. And they were sitting there. And when they finished, they left part of their sandwich on the floor, and just went off then back to their work place, after the bell rang. And so I men? tioned to a couple of foremen, "Hey, look. We built this cafeteria to accommodate these people, and look, we can't put up with this kind of a sloppy mess. That's all there is to it. So," I said, "the next time that break comes on, you people want to po? lice this thing so that nobody's leaving this kind of junk around." And, well, I mean, the people I spoke to sort of said, "Yes," but not really meaningful. You know? And a couple of nights later, I went to a dance. And I believe it was out in New Wa-
Page 79 - Part One of a Two-Part Story: We Worked for General Instruments
Page 81 - Part One of a Two-Part Story: We Worked for General Instruments
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