CONSULTATION, PARTICIPATION AND CO-OPERATION BETWEEN WINSTONE PULP INTERNATIONAL, THE NDU AND THE EPMU

The Parties’ Relationship Today and the Challenges Ahead

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WPI, NDU and EPMU have developed close and productive working relationships. The strength of these relationships are based both around personal relationships between the leadership within each organisation, as well as systems and structures that the parties developed over a number of years that are now incorporated into the Collective Employment Agreement.

Senior management exhibit natural empathy and understanding for their workforce. No doubt that is due in part to a large number of the managers having moved from shop floor roles to their current positions. Indeed, the Managing Director, David Anderson, was President of the Pulp and Paper Workers Union (Now NDU) on-site back in 1978 when the company was first formed.

“Management always had a view that if you treat people like adults they will act like adults.”
WPI Manager

The leadership of both unions emphasised how much they valued the working relationship and the importance of the changes to working practices that have been put into place for both the company and the broader industry.

“I rate WPI as one of more enlightened employers in the private sector.”
Jim Jones – Wood Sector Division Secretary NDU

A number of delegates commented that while some of the workforce did not appreciate how well off they are compared to other work sites, overall there was both an appreciation and understanding about what was behind some of the success in the relationship.

“There is an extremely good relationship with the company. Not to say that we don’t have our problems. The workforce is mature and intelligent. The culture is good. People use their brains. Management is hands-off. They let people work things out for themselves.”
NDU delegate

“They have got a pretty good partnership with the company.”
NDU delegate

Indicators of this success can be found in the very low turnover of staff with an average length of service of 12 years for production and 10 years for maintenance. Importantly, in an industry that has had its fair share of industrial action, both managers and employees commented on the almost total lack of work stoppage over the 28 years of the company’s existence.

All the parties acknowledged that the past success provides a solid platform to confront the challenges of the future which include some of the following areas where more work needs to be done to maximise gains.

Communication

Historically, communication has been a considerable strength within the company. One employee commented that when he arrived there 13 years ago, he noticed straightaway that managers and employees worked together and that communication was open and robust.

Management have had and continue to have an open door policy with respect to both the workforce and the unions.

“There is a really good open door policy with the management. You can talk to the Mill Manager at any time.”
EPMU delegate

“They are laying their cards on the table all the time; all information. You can ask all sorts of questions. Nothing is held back”
EPMU member

In addition to an open door policy, senior management communication with the workforce has been assisted through regular meetings of each shift. However, these meetings are no longer possible to the same extent as the new shift arrangements effectively mean that one or more groups of shift workers can be absent from the worksite on rostered breaks for 10 days on a regular basis.

Therefore, workforce communication relies heavily on both middle management utilising team structures and union delegates communicating directly with their membership on the shift that they work on. This has problems in terms of the clarity of the message and the timeframe in which it is received.

A number of workers commented that dialogue is not great within the teams and with the team leaders.

“The opportunity for dialogue exists, but we don’t all have the skills for it. Most people are from the shop floor. Middle managers don’t have skills to communicate. They have come up through the ranks without good people skills.”
EPMU delegate

Senior management acknowledge this as an area of concern and attribute the current difficulties to a shortfall in the provision of effective training for middle managers which they have committed to address through the development of suitable training courses focussed on situational leadership.

It clear that there is a need for some dedicated work on how the participants and team leaders should communicate. This could be possible through joint training on communication skills.

The Consultative Committee which meets every month also suffers from the same problem where delegates who are rostered off shift may not attend the meeting. Delegates expressed that these meetings were valuable but voiced concerns that, rather than being a vehicle for consultation, they were becoming a forum for management to disseminate information. Possibly, this reflects problems with continuity caused by delegates no longer attending every meeting.

The recent appointment of a Communications Manager should positively assist in the challenges of effective communication caused by shift rosters. In particular, the workforce has welcomed the production of a fortnightly employee bulletin “Fibre Line”. This bulletin aims to provide factual, timely information about the news of the business, including any changes taking place.

Overtime

Salarisation or annualised salaries had a levelling effect on how much overtime was worked and by whom. People who previously didn’t want to work overtime had to. The outcome has been less overtime worked, but there are some remaining difficulties with ensuring sufficient coverage for working overtime when it is required.

This issue is recognised by both management and the workforce. The union commented that 10 to 15% of people are not making themselves available for their share of overtime.

“The idea behind salarisation was to work cleverer and work less overtime. The old system was milked a bit.”

“250 hours were built into the salarisation as overtime. Only 80 to 90 of those hours are worked on average. The problem now is that people are losing sight of the 250 hours they were paid for.”

EPMU delegate

Middle management, in particular, sees this as a problem in respect to maintenance staff.

“Building overtime into salarisation has not worked. The incentive to work has been removed. Maintenance supervisors cannot get the people they need to work overtime.”
WPI Management

One proposed solution offered by a middle manager is to incentivise the staff by once again placing them on wages. This is not a view shared by senior management. Senior management reiterated that they were committed to solving this issue by all parties working together to address it through more effective management of overtime.

An objective view is that the goal of incorporating overtime into the salaries was to reduce the focus on staff bolstering their income through working excessive hours. The reduction in the number of overtime hours worked is evidence that this has been successful but it also has to be considered against a decline in plant availability/uptime in the last few years. One manager felt that the decline in plant availability/uptime could be attributed to a loss of focus on the importance of this productivity driver. The senior management view is that encouraging all staff to pull their weight and build the team structures is a more effective way to deal with the management of the overtime problem.

Making self-managed teams work in maintenance

The company saw the package of changes at WPI as risky. A big motivation for the company was the self-management of the teams and initial training focussed on teamwork development was provided.

The maintenance staff developed an area concept for undertaking maintenance work. The intention behind this was that maintenance workers would become owners of their areas and spend more time on preventive work, rather than a traditional focus of responding to breakdowns.

The general view is that self-managed teams in maintenance are not working and that this is evidenced by inadequate planning of work and the absence of regular meetings. In addition, there seemed to be an ignorance of what, if any, key performance indicators they were aiming to meet. Management reiterated their view that the nature of the business requires flexibility and an ability to react quickly to customer demands.

Part of the problem stems from there being no shared view between middle management, team leaders, and team members as to how the teams should function and what their role was in meeting work objectives.

“There are different opinions on what self-managed teams mean. The company saw this as a well-disciplined team. The workers saw this as them making all the decisions.”
WPI Management

Contrary to this comment were other team members who felt that people were not taking on work by their own initiative, and that employees prefer to have someone tell them what to do.

There also were concerns from team members that they were not adequately supported in how to function as part of a team.

“There is no training in how to work as part of a team environment. No directions, goals or guidelines.”
WPI Manager

Management outlined that these concerns would be addressed in part through the improved skills and focus that team leaders would acquire through participation in situational leadership courses.

The more central issue might well be gaining a clear strategic direction for the role of maintenance in the operation of the plant. Maintenance work has changed with a focus on preventive maintenance and, for workers, less opportunity for variation in their work which, in turn, affects their level of work satisfaction.

“Preventive/protective maintenance does not have the same level of satisfaction as fixing a breakdown.” A possible solution is giving some sense of ownership so that people are individually responsible for fixing breakdowns on the machines that they maintain.”
WPI Management

However, managers also pointed to problems with responding to plant needs under the four-day coverage arrangement and have proposed that a possible solution is to have a split in the maintenance workforce. This would be based on having one group working a Monday to Thursday work week and the other group working a Tuesday to Friday work week.

“It’s difficult to get people to respond to breakdowns outside the four days.”
WPI Management

At this point, not everyone has embraced a workforce culture that requires people to take on board individual responsibility.

“There is no accountability from anyone, management or workers. There is no discussion about KPI’s or about downtime - no time-keeping accountability. A failure to hold people accountable in respect to overtime undermines incentives for the whole workforce.”
EPMU delegate

Clarifying what the role and function of maintenance work at WPI is for middle managers, team leaders, and team members and the level of required accountability remains an essential issue. Despite these problems, senior management remain committed to the operation of effective workplace teams and see this as a vehicle for unlocking the workforce’s potential. They are clear that it is the role of middle managers to facilitate this.

“It is a huge change in people’s thinking from reactive to preventive maintenance because people don’t get the immediate accolades they got from fixing a problem or dealing with a crisis. This is an industry-wide issue about recognising and valuing the contribution your maintenance workforce makes through preventive maintenance. At WPI, we are committed to recognising and valuing the work of preventive maintenance undertaken by our staff.”
WPI Management

The challenge for middle managers

The company is quite clear on the change it wants to see in the workforce:

“…engaging the shop floor, getting the workforce to do more of what middle managers are doing and redirecting middle managers into productivity improvement.”
Paul Saunders – Pulp Mill Manager

The company are equally aware of the tension between trying to create cultural change on the workshop floor led by middle managers with an old-style management focus who have had no training in how to do this. Improving people management is a key project under the company’s strategic plan.

Aligned to this strategic focus and the commitment to teams, the challenge for the incumbent middle management is to positively respond to the demands of their changed role and adapt their style of management, with the assistance of the company.

“Middle managers are being asked to manage by influence rather than direction.”
Paul Saunders – Pulp Mill Manager

“People at the coalface are vital. We don’t make pulp without them. The job of middle managers is to give them the support required to do the job, ensuring that they have the tools and training. The role of middle managers is an enabling role. It takes time to achieve this, because it takes time to up-skill managers and change workplace culture.”
WPI Management

The unions are sympathetic to the challenges faced by middle management. They acknowledge that the senior management and workers pushed through the change agenda without much middle management input and that, as a consequence, there may be a sense of alienation.

“There is a need to put significant resources into training middle managers, including mentoring skills. They need an opportunity to move towards an encouragement style of management.”
Jim Jones – Wood Sector Division Secretary NDU

Training

Two different, but equally important, perspectives support the importance of training for the company.

“What we want now are the people to do things smarter. To have a better understanding of the process and the product.”
WPI Management

“The more training you do, the more you can move through the pay levels.”
NDU delegate

As stated previously, the company has demonstrated a considerable commitment to training with a pre-paid allocation of 15 days. The staff training manager reports that the company is in the process of drawing up training plans for all staff. However, there are some concerns about the current level of training occurring. Some had the view that the training has slowed because the money is not available to provide this, or that they have run out of things in which to train people.

In respect to maintenance staff, the reality is that they are already well trained when they commence employment, so the issue is partly about what training is required. Other factors concern the shift roster.

“It has become harder and harder to get people to come into training on Friday.The problem of running training on Friday is the remoteness and cost when using external trainers. People have got accustomed to Friday being a day off rather than a training day.”
WPI Management

The level of training has implications for skill-based pay, as it can be a block on wage movement. Production workers did not raise this as a concern, but senior management were concerned that there were issues in skill advancement, and that people had not moved through the system to the extent expected.

For maintenance workers, the absence of a skill-based pay system some years after it was first mooted is a source of frustration. One maintenance worker commented that:
“Skill-based pay is a dead duck and has been for the last five years.”
EPMU delegate

In respect to implementing a skill-based pay system, there was an acknowledgement that production workers were the target group, and this had been largely successful. Management felt that skill-based pay has been difficult to progress for maintenance staff, because they want to keep allowances and bonuses. However, maintenance staff, although pessimistic, felt that there was still an opportunity to up-skill and improve their remuneration through a skill-based pay system.

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