One way that Organized Labor slows technical innovation

I used to work in a plant that stamped parts out of sheet-metal.

The plant had a large crew of tool-and-die skilled tradesmen.

Every six months or year (I forget the frequency) management compiled a plan to "right-size" the manpower balance with respect to work coming in and Corporate edicts. Even though the amount of work went up when sister-plants were closed and down as the Corporation was staggering toward bankruptcy, the number of tool-and-die makers never dropped at our plant.

Curiosity got the better of me and I looked into it. (Note, all numbers are pulled out of my nethermost orifice).

There were always 83 tool-and-die guys even when a rational assessment might suggest we only needed 53 or 43 or 37.

To cut to the chase, a small corner of the plant was dedicated to Electro-Discharge Machining which was a high-tech method of removing metal and is "computer intensive". That is, an operator sits at a terminal and manipulates "data" to ensure robot-heads don't try to drive through 4000 pound blocks of hardened, D-2 tool-steel.

The  Toolmaker who had been trained in EDM was 83th in seniority for the plant. The only way the plant could execute EDM files was to keep 83 Tool-and-Die tradesmen.

I asked why Toolmakers with greater seniority had not been offered training and I was looked at as if I were a moron.

"You don't think we offered?" they responded. "As soon as a higher seniority Diesinker was trained in EDM they know we would lay-off dozens of skilled-trades. Not only would the lower seniority people make that Diesinker's life a living hell, so would the union management!"

But that is not all

Overtime was offered by equalization-of-overtime. The person in the trade who had the least overtime in the plant was the first person offered the work with seniority being a tie-breaker. Then the next. Then the next...

Since there was only one person who could do the work, and since there was enough work for two people, #83 "had" to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep up. That mean that every T&D tradesman was offered the same, even if there was no work for them to do. If they accepted, they clocked in at the start of their shift and clocked out 12.5 hours later and got paid for 8 + 1.5*4 for the weekdays, 1.5*12 for Saturday and 2.0*12 for Sunday. Not a bad pay-rate for reading the paper.

And this was in a plant that was considered to have good Union-Management relations.