>>>Ever know "labor" to intentionally slow things way down, or even foul things up intentionally? <<<
Yes, but there's always a backstory.
<tangent>, likely boring to most of you
The story:
Setting: An axle plant, where axles with cast center sections are/were assembled on a slowly moving conveyor with the pinion pointing down, and the center section gasket and cover put on last.
Someone on the line put in a formal suggestion that we cover the center sections while the line was shut down at night, to avoid contamination.
As the new, green, assistant manufacturing process engineer in training for that line, I had to provide a written response to the suggestion.
I conducted an investigation. That part of the factory was then new, the ceiling was in good shape, and the place was kept at least as clean as our offices. I asked the people in charge of warranty records; we weren't having a problem with contamination of any kind.
So I wrote a polite response, declining to implement the suggestion. It was typed up (long time ago), reviewed, and sent out in snail mail.
A couple of days later, there was a panic in the morning because many of the axles under construction had been contaminated with floor sweepings, machining chips, dirt, and assorted junk, while the line was down overnight. No one was mystified.
We knew exactly who should have been fired, but it was a union shop. Lacking irrefutable evidence, and maybe even if we had had it, we couldn't do a damn thing about it.
The backstory:
There was a substantial financial incentive to at least submit suggestions. The Company rewarded implemented suggestions with something like one percent of the first year's savings, in cash. That doesn't sound like much, but because of the production volume, a savings of a penny per car would net you enough of a reward to buy yourself one of those cars, brand new. It had happened.
One of the production managers got his ne'er-do-well son a summer job there, and sort of pushed through a suggestion on the kid's behalf. It was not a bad idea. It probably didn't save nearly as much money as was asserted, but it did help. It may even have actually been the kid's idea, but I didn't think he was quite that bright.
What he was, was insufferable.
The kid bought a new car with his money, a flashy one, and drove it proudly, and bragged about how he got it, to anyone who would listen, and to all who were tired of hearing about how smart he thought he was.
True, the Company had actually rewarded actual valuable suggestions over the years, but not that many, and none were as technically trivial as The Kid's. All two thousand people at that plant, except his Dad, hated or at least resented that brat.
Of course, I didn't know the backstory when I catalyzed the events in the frontstory. It would have been cheaper to give a token reward, and let them cover the axles until they got tired of doing it... just like the old timers in my office had advised me to do.
Hey, I knew everything, and they were just ... old. Now I'm old, and try real hard to give good advice, just like they did, to about the same effect.
Because of that experience, for a while I thought that all union shops were run like, and necessarily had the emotional atmosphere and petty politics of, high school, or maybe middle school. Since then, I've found a few union shops where the employees were treated like, and behaved like, adults. I'm told that factory's culture changed about ten years after I left.
If I learn just a little bit more, I'll know absolutely nothing.
</tangent>
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
lease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.