Looking Forward. By Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel

7. Workplace Decision Making

"Although workers can't know for sure how changes in relations or technology will affect them before trying them, they must make estimates or there is no way to proceed with evaluations and choices. Advocates of each proposal present and defend their claims about material and human consequences and, finally, workers vote on the three options."

The John Henry Plan

With Northstart planning we emphasized overall logic and left out details of personal discussions and the qualitative dimensions of plan formation. For the John Henry Steel Plant we would like to focus on a few examples of interchanges rather than overall dynamics. This will provide a different slant on the planning process including the types of disagreements likely to occur. It will also help us explain how workers can adjust work loads, and how they pay attention to the qualitative as well as quantitative dimensions of what they produce and use.

An Overview of John Henry Planning

As at Northstart, planning at John Henry goes through a sequence of iterations involving the evaluation of demands from other units along with attendant proposals, revisions, negotiations, and decisions. John Henry Steel plant employs thousands of workers, has a large amount of heavy specialized machinery, and has a production process that involves an average work complex well below the social average. Proposals for improving worklife at John Henry are therefore high on the agenda, and John Henry workers spend more than the average number of hours doing work outside John Henry at more rewarding labors.

Because the seven planning iterations are formally the same at John Henry as at Northstart, we will not, summarize them again. Moreover, since each plant embellishes its own planning procedures with whatever rules, schedules, and divisions of responsibility it chooses, John Henry has many differences from Northstart, but these idiosyncrasies are not our concern here. Instead we want to see some of the disagreements that arise in planning.

Choosing Between Alternative Production Schemes:

An Argument Between Departments

In the early stages of planning John Henry workers must choose proposals to change organization/technology. Let us look in on this process once it has gotten down to a choice between three alternatives.

Proposal 1's main features involve some new furnace equipment and rearranging a few aspects of associated processes. Its supporters -claim it will allow a two percent reduction in labor hours per ton of steel output, no significant change in material inputs, and only a modest improvement in the average work complex for the plant by removing one dangerous and one rote task from one part of the production process.

Proposal 2's advocates also claim a small reduction in labor needs and modest improvement in work complex for a similar
investment in new equipment. Procedure 2 was proposed by the record-keeping department and affects only work they do. The record-keeping work team estimates a slightly greater improvement in average work complex than for proposal 1.

Proposal 3 evolved through discussions among a number of divisions and involves more elaborate changes including purchase of major new equipment, a substantial redefinition of tasks, and a major rescheduling of plant procedures. It requires a much greater investment and alteration of social relations than either proposal 1 or 2. Its advocates claim it will only marginally increase material inputs needed per ton of steel produced, though it will increase labor needed per ton of steel by three percent. The major advantage of proposal 3 is that it would significantly improve the average work complex at John Henry, offering improved work conditions and increased opportunity for discussion and communication among workers.

Earlier in the planning process a number of other proposals were rejected as inferior, though some of their better features were incorporated into the three proposals. At this point there is a plantwide debate about the three alternatives. Since both proposals I and 2 reduce the social cost of inputs without sacrificing output and with only minor investments, there is little doubt other councils in the industry and economy will approve them. On the other hand, since the third proposal requires substantial investment and also increases inputs per output, while the improvement in quality of worklife might warrant the change, this would have to be carefully explained to other units in the economy since the usual "quantitative" indicators would not immediately in and of themselves, indicate grounds for approval.

Advocates of all three proposals have personal biases coming from energy they have invested, pride in having worked out a proposal for their workplace, and heartfelt beliefs. This creates three factions with some overlap, because some workers' complexes involve them with more than one of the departments offering options. For everyone else the only grounds for choosing are a combination of personal preferences and intellectual orientations.

For example, Roger calculates that with either of the first two proposals his situation is likely to change only slightly-work in the plant would be slightly more rewarding and consequently he would probably work fewer hours outside the plant on community day care. The third proposal, on the other hand, would substantially improve the quality of his work at John Henry and lead to a significant reduction in pleasurable outside duties that used to be required to balance his overall work experience. In the short run, Roger expects he would personally benefit considerably, but in the longer run once job balancing committees finished their work, the benefits would be offset by being spread around.

Knowing that equity will be achieved, Roger realizes that for him personally the issue is the same as for society as a whole: which combination of proposals advances well being the most?

Different workers feel more or less strongly about the prospects, influenced by their own circumstances and by their different assessments of implications for others. The decision making process first involves debate and discussion leading to agreement to adopt particular material/qualitative descriptions as the best conjectures about the most likely effects of the three procedures. Although workers can't know for sure how changes in relations or technology will affect them before trying them, they must make estimates or there is no way to proceed with evaluations and choices. Advocates of each proposal present and defend their claims about material and human consequences and, finally, workers vote on the three options. Suppose option 1 gets the fewest votes.

Plant facilitation workers then propose two options which are slightly amended versions of options two and three, and provide spreadsheets that show their anticipated implications. Discussion and debate begins anew. This time, however, a council meeting is convened and works toward resolution in open session. One group of workers proposes a compromise incorporating what seems to be the most popular elements into a single package. A vote accepts this as a better starting place for the forum than either of the facilitation proposals. A period of amending and wrangling commences. At some point workers sense diminishing returns and call for a vote. Indeed, any time the majority votes for closure, meeting time can be reduced, and of course individuals who may reach their personal saturation point earlier can absent themselves from discussions at any point, returning later to vote.

Though some advocates of earlier proposals will likely feel that a second-best choice has been made, everyone understands that what has been decided represents the result of informed democratic deliberations. Everyone congratulates the facilitation workers and proposers of the compromise plan and goes home.