While we plan to return in
later blogs to the Mondragon Cooperative, we'd like to begin to address
American worker cooperatives! We will examine what potential they might have to
help eleviate rapidly deteriorating working conditions of the American working
class, what obstacles they face and which American cooperatives are surviving
in the current economic climate and why.
Below is a video clip of
Shift Change - a new documentary on worker cooperatives at home and abroad. It
includes footage taken of Mondragon workers as well as several U.S.
cooperatives we might choose to cover in blogs to come.
In our first two blogs we have presented
Mondragon’s business structure and corporate values with an emphasis on those aspects
we find particularly important in vouchsafing the health and safety of its
workers. Here, we’d like to address a few problems with the Mondragon
experience as a “worker cooperative” corporation as it has undergone expansion
and evolution over the past 30 years.
Expansion of the company:
By the
mid-1980s it had become apparent to Mondragon’s that many of its products were
in directcompetition with other multinational
companies. Since retooling their company to make other products would be
difficult and costly, it was decided that the company would instead adapt to current global
practices rather than dramatically change their own products (2,5). This
meant, for example, that Mondragon would embrace expansion abroad,
Erosion
of “worker collective” values:
Mondragon
opened new plants in Mexico, Morocco, Egypt, Argentina, Thailand and China to name a few and, while Modragon insists it tries
to ensure good working conditions in its international plants, its
international workforce have not been offered member-ownership. Even within
Spain, Mondragon-owned popular Spanish food chain Eroski, did notoffer its 40,000 employees a
chance to become worker-owners until 2009 (7, 5, 9, 2). This resulted in
a loosening of Mondragon’s grip on its own stated values as a worker-owned
cooperative.
Today, roughly one-third of Mondragón workers are
nonmembers out of 256 companies. This exceeds the original Mondragón commitment
to never employ more than
10% nonmembers.
“Temporary”
labor and gender inequality:
Gender equality in their hiring practices is also
an issue. As with other globally competitive capitalist corporations we’ve seen
(e.g.. Foxconn) when Mondragon experiences an increase in demand from the
marketplace they draw from a pool of temporary workers to fill the labor gap.
Temporary hires at Mondragon are overwhelmingly female, thus many lower
positions within the company are being occupied by females while blue-collar jobs
at Mondragon’s coops remain largely male (10). Temporary female workers often
receive less pay and, by definition, have less job security. This social stratification of workers by
gender is the anti-thesis of workplace democracy.
Alienation:
In the mid-1960s alternative approaches (in the
form of Scandinavian work groups) were introduced to Ulgor workers in an effort
to replace the rote and alienating line work Taylorism had brought. The
recession of the 1980s, however, created a shift away from alternative
manufacturing processes as the coops began to be more concerned with their
bottom line (11). By the early 1990s several lean production practices had been
accepted, including just-in-time
inventory along with other manufacturing practices to increase productivity
such as shift work (10). It’s hard to imagine in a company where workers
have a share in power the actual organization of work within its factories has
been left basically untouched. These practices bring into question the ability of Mondragon to support
workplace democracy and whether all member-owners are truly active in
decision-making within the company. (9,5,10).
Conclusion:
Mondragon
is doing, many things right as we discussed in our previous two blogs re the
company. However, given
their commitment to the goals of worker participation and improved worker
health, one would think they would extend offers of membership to their foreign
employees, take a stand on gender inequality (possibly through outreach through
their educational branch) and do more to encourage democracy and participation
on the work floor.
As reported recently in the New York Times,
signs of change can be seen in Foxconn’s factories. Protective foam has been
placed on low stairwell ceilings inside factories and automatic shut-off devices
have been added to many machines. Some workers have also received more
comfortable chairs (1,2). Hourly wages are reportedly also up and hours of work
per week are down. All this is supposedly good news for workers at Foxconn.
In fact, according to the Times, Foxconn has already carried out
more than 280 of 360 changes recommended by the Fair Labor Association (FLA ref
2).
You might remember from our previous blogs,
Foxconn and Apple both made numerous commitments to change working conditions
at the plants after meeting with the Fair Labor Association (FLA), whose report(released in March of 2012) identified numerous major problems at
Foxconn including very long work hours (up to 80 hours per week), excessive and
often unpaid overtime, safety violations as well as inhumane housing
conditions.
Foxconn announced that by July 2013, no employee
would be allowed to work more than an average of 49 hours a week (the limit set
by Chinese law) and promised to increase wages so employees’ total pay would not
decline when overtime hours are cut. Wages were raised for some workers in Shenzhen by 16 to 25
percent (6,7). However, despite
the higher hourlywages,
Foxconn’s partial compliance with Chinese weekly work limits has resulted in an
average overall decrease in
salaries for many workers leading to complaints by many who need the extra
hours and the income to provide for their families. As we were completing this article China Labor Watch reported that workers
at Foxconn Group’s Xin Hai Yang Precision Factory had gone on strike January 11th
to protest low wages. (see ref 11)
The
story from the NY Times also reports that other reforms arebeing implemented by Foxconn in areas
like health and safety, environmental protection, compensation, grievance
systems, workplace conduct and discipline, and termination and retrenchment policy
though it’s unclear in the article exactly what changes are being made (2).
Even with these reforms, chronic problems remain
at the plant. Envoyé
Spécial,
a60 Minutes-like program from a public TV
station in France, went undercover at the Zhengzhou iPhone 5 Foxconn factory and
reported several days ago that it had found workers living in dormitories still
under construction without electricity
or running water. Reporters also met with lower-paid student workers who
claimed they were required to continue working at the factory in fear of losing
their diplomas as well as workers who claimed that much of their upgraded $290
monthly salary was still being absorbed by the company through housing,
insurance and food (3,5).
Just this past September, (six months after
Foxconn agreed to a Fair Labor Association request for new internship rules),
two worker advocacy groups found that students in nonmanufacturing courses were
being improperly forced to work at a Foxconn plant in north central China (4). One
student studying preschool education said she was prohibited from quitting her
internship and was compelled to work night shifts. Afterward, Mr. Gou of
Foxconn issued apologies to wronged interns and the responsible official was
fired (1).
Earlier
in the year reports surfaced from
Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) finding that the
year's multiple Apple product launches put added pressure on the factories, allegedly
pushing workers into overtime and forcing them to endure
"humiliating" disciplinary action, including the writing and reading
of confession letters, and manual labor duties like toilet cleaning.
This
climaxed in early October when a riot broke out at the Chengdu, China plant
involving thousands of workers after a clash with security staff. Dozens of
Foxconn employees were arrested. Only
12 days later, 3,000 to 4,000 workers at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant walked
off the job when fights broke out between quality control inspectors and line
workers on the iPhone 5 (8,9).
Though Foxconn has reportedly been training
managers to treat employees less brusquely, foremen still use profanity and
intimidation, workers say. “The managers speak in a manner that often feels
like a threat,” said Mou Kezhang, who works in iPad quality assurance at the
Foxconn factory in Chengdu (1). Clearly,
the pressure on Foxconn for increased production of various Apple components
has led to oppressive management practices and shortcuts to increase
production.
The important issue of poor psychosocial work environment at the
plants and the role work stressors play in the negative health outcomes of
workers continues to be ignored.Work stressors include; work intensity and speed-up, long work hours (this appears to have been partially
addressed), organizational justice, effort-reward imbalance, low social support, job strain and threat-avoidant vigilance, to name a few. Recent research
publications from China indicate that job strain
and effort-reward imbalance may play important roles in the
development of musculoskeletal disorders and also physical injuries among chinese
workers (10,11). The FLA as well as watchdog groups such as China Labor Watch
have ignored these psychosocial factors or aren’t aware of their importance.
Nor has anyone examined the impact of these psychosocial stressors on the
negative psychological health outcomes plaguing this population of workers -
observable by the significant number of suicides the plant has experienced over
the last few years. These issues need to addressed along with work hours and
wages for work life at Foxconn to significantly improve. Without these changes we
can expect continued and andd increasing negative health outcomes.
Colleagues, Here (inserted below) is a short article from Personnel Today (January 2013) which discusses the impact of job strain on the cardiovascular health of older male workers.
Work stress linked to heart attack risk in older men
Older men with stressful jobs and little power to make decisions are more likely to suffer with heart disease than their peers with less job strain, according to a study published in Occupational Medicine, the journal of the Society of Occupational Medicine.
The researchers from University College Cork found that older male workers who had had a heart attack or had unstable angina were four times as likely to have high job strain as those that did not.
Job strain, or the combination of high job demands and low control at work, has long been associated with coronary heart disease, but this latest research looked specifically at its effects in the older workforce.
Intriguingly, it found there was a clear difference between younger and older workers - the association was not found in younger people.
Lead author Vera McCarthy said: "This study is important as it provides information on older workers necessary to inform policy-makers, clinicians, OH physicians and employers."
The society argued that as the UK's working population ages, employers will need to make work more attractive and feasible for older workers, implementing changes that enable them to work up to and beyond state pension age.
To this end, investing in OH services will become increasingly important in keeping people economically active and helping to ensure that older workers remain healthy and fit, it added.
"Employers need to ensure that they are looking after the health of their older employees, making the necessary adjustments and being flexible about the jobs they do and their working practices," said society president Dr Richard Heron.
