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Old April 13th 05, 09:37 AM
-L.
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Gainsburger via CatKB.com wrote:
Management Bites Dog Food Factory
A story of management resistance to
employee involvement and self-direction
by Art Kleiner


It started out as an experiment in workplace democracy and set

performance
records. So why did the bosses want to shut it down?

This is the story of an idea so powerful that management couldn't

kill it.
An idea rooted in a factory that four different companies have owned,
enjoyed great results from, and then tried to shut down---only to

have the
idea bite management back.

The idea is self-governing, high-performance teams---the stuff of the

now-
back-in-vogue socio-technical movement. The place is a dog food

plant,
where the idea was first tried, flourished, and then went through
successive owners who couldn't decide which side of the idea they

were on.
The story dates back to 1966.

One morning, in an isolated warehouse at a Gaines dog food plant in
Kankakee, Illinois, a 20-year-old nightshift worker was found bound

to a
column with packaging tape. He was unhurt, but he couldn't get free.

Once
discovered, he was immediately cut down. The question was: What to do

next?
The workers who'd assaulted their colleague couldn't be punished

because of
union rules. And Lyman Ketchum and Ed Dulworth, the two senior

managers in
the plant, didn't want to punish them. Labor-management relations

were
already on the brink of explosion, in part a result of the unexpected
success of Gainesburgers, which had pushed the decrepit facility to

operate
at three-times capacity. Instead of "kicking ass and taking names"

as some
supervisors suggested, Ketchum and Dulworth opted for a more

radical---and
more productive---course: a sociotechnical pilot project.


I know this plant. The workers used to grab stray dogs and throw them
into the meat grinders, alive, for fun. And I suspect the guy tied to
the post was black, the perps, white. Not a pretty place,
what-so-ever...

-L.