The horizontal arrangement may move substantial work out of the bargaining unit. Lean production is moving to limit in-plant maintenance workers to short-term jobs. This may be accomplished by outsourcing construction, installation, and repair or diagnostic jobs that take more than four hours. It is the installation jobs and large repairs, particularly in combination, that use and develop the most skills in a trade.

Taking the more routine tasks away from skilled work classifications and shifting them to operators benefits the operators in the sense of providing a more varied and less alienating job experience. But the advantages are limited. Remember that the operator's job is also being broadened for flexibility. Since the job has to be designed so that a new operator can be easily moved into place, the amount of maintenance the operator can learn or be entrusted with is limited. At the same time the removal of even routine parts of skilled jobs from skilled workers reduces the number of skilled positions so opportunities for production workers to advance are also lost. The effect is to chop off the bottom of the career ladder.

The new bundling of skilled tasks also offers management the possibility of keeping or moving the critical skilled tasks out of the bargaining unit and into management classifications. This is most extensive in telecommunications, where the companies have long concentrated key skills in bloated management categories so that they can withstand strikes of many weeks with virtually no disruption of services.

The idea that the skilled trades must become "multiskilled" seems to be deeply embedded in all lean production thinking. But here we see where the priorities lie, among the bundle of contradictory claims of lean production advocates. Compare two possible arrangements for factory maintenance: a team of eight skilled workers each of whom is a specialist in his or her field (say electricians, machine repair, millwrights and pipefitters), or a team of four persons trained in general maintenance.

The specialist arrangement raises a red flag for lean production, because often there will not be exactly the right work in the right proportions to keep all the specialists busy. Muda! (Japanese for waste.) Much better to have fewer skilled workers who can be assigned any job and always kept busy. This also helps maintain the desired atmosphere of urgency and pressure.

But lean production claims to have other goals. These include safety, quality, machine uptime, and tracing problems to the root cause. If you examine each of these goals, the specialist model is preferable. Having a specialist in control of a task such as preventive maintenance means she is more likely to notice abnormal circumstances. The less a person knows about a particular trade, the more likely that he will "jumper out" or otherwise defeat safety mechanisms or quality devices (lean production's "foolproofing") to get production running again as quickly as possible. The less able such a person is to track a problem to its root cause. And the less able such a person is to resist supervisor pressure to take shortcuts.

Of course, experts and specialists still must exist under lean production. Indeed, as technology advances, being expert in a field requires more, not less, specialization. But under the horizontal skill arrangement, increasingly the expertise is located in management classifications, or with outside contractors.

In all the studies of work reorganization, we have seen none that seeks to prove the case for teams of generalists rather than skilled specialists on the shop floor. For management, it is simply a given. The reason management is so committed to multiskilling is the same reason that unions should be defending clear specialist lines--multiskilling greatly reduces the power of skilled workers in the production system.

Standardized work and extracting knowledge

Management attempts to apply these two well-known aspects of lean production to the trades. Documenting job knowledge through ISO 9000 or similar processes and writing standardized maintenance procedures may benefit the smooth running of the process and the quality of the product. But they also make it easier for management to use replacement workers during a strike, and hence greatly reduce the power of skilled workers. Documented maintenance records and standardized job descriptions are quickly turned into scab manuals. Job knowledge by its nature takes a considerable time to develop, but once given away cannot be retrieved. Workers certainly never receive job security or other sources of power in exchange for the knowledge given away.

Training

While everyone pays lip service to training, almost no attention is paid to its real content nor to its implications for the power of skilled workers.

The role of training for skilled work has changed substantially in just one generation. Previously, the apprenticeship model was adequate. In this model, young workers, presumably with a recent high school or perhaps college background, are provided with an intensive combination of on-the-job and classroom training in their field at the beginning of their working careers. After that they maintain and advance their skills through experience, on-the-job training, some vendor training, and some extension courses. Those who wish can become masters in their craft. Technology changes, but sufficiently slowly that it is possible to keep up through these means. To put it another way, with the apprenticeship model, the trades could maintain the required industrial skills and the power those skills provided.

But in the last generation advances in computers, automation and materials, as well as increased government regulations and tighter tolerances, mean that the old model doesn't work. For most skilled workers it is difficult or impossible to keep up simply through on-the-job learning. Even if the apprenticeship training is adequate for the day (most is not), the technology base shifts so rapidly that tradespeople find themselves behind in a short time. For example, 15 years ago, an electrician who wanted to be at the cutting edge of her trade had to trace electrical circuits to the component level.

This meant she had to understand the function of individual electronic parts in a highly complex arrangement and, using test and soldering equipment, locate defective components on a printed circuit board and replace them. Today this kind of work is rarely done in the plant. Today a skilled maintenance electrician has to be versatile with a computer and some number of programming languages and diagnostic programs. The "half-life" of most computer programming skills is only a few years. To one degree or another it is the same in all trades. Drafting is out, computer-aided design is in. Eyeballing alignment on straightedges is out and laser interferometers are in.

The change in technology is so fast that it has caused a qualitative change in the ability of tradespeople to control their own training and therefore their relationship to the trade. The tools and software used by all trades become more elaborate and more expensive. Increasingly, skilled workers cannot afford to own their own, closing off another route for self-training. Unless they receive systematic and organized training, the current skilled workforce is automatically and rapidly deskilled by advances in technology.

As inadequate as on-the-job training is in keeping up with the march of technology, features of lean production make it an even less supportive environment for ongoing learning: Plants are equipped with neither the tools nor the tasks conducive to learning. The removal of the construction, installation and major service portions of the work leaves little opportunity for training. The drive to more fully utilize production capacity means there is less on-the-job time that skilled workers can use the machinery to investigate or learn. The leaning of the workforce means that there is less learning time available. Even the new concepts of cleanliness and order (the 5 Japanese S's) work against learning. One important method of on-the-job learning is experimenting with old or defective parts or equipment. Frequently the first act of born-again managers is to clean up by throwing out parts that do not have an immediate use.

One result is that the economics of training are altered for management. If new generations of technology must be taught, then it is more costly to train the current workforce than to recruit workers newly trained. The experienced worker requires a much higher pay both for training and regular work. Besides, the experienced worker may not be as adept at the new skills. Much better to recruit new workers trained on their own time at public expense, where it is possible for management to select the ones with exactly the right skills and job attitude. Companies then add the job-specific training that binds them to the firm.

The older workers can be left to deal with the older technology that remains in use; hopefully they will retire by the time all their usefulness is gone. If not, they can be pushed out. This training strategy becomes even more attractive to management as unions agree to sharply reduced wages for new-hires and a longer period before reaching the full wage. It becomes still more attractive when the public subsidizes the costs of training.

Yet the need for some advanced training for those already working seems so obvious that unions, companies, government, and various agencies all promote massive training programs. What happens to these training efforts?

Consider the experience of one class in a 1994 training course to upgrade electronic skills for electricians in a newly remodeled auto assembly plant. Electricians were to learn to troubleshoot the latest model programmable logic controller (PLC)--a specialized industrial computer that controls the operations of assembly and production lines. On the surface, everything was in place for a good training program. The curriculum had been examined and approved by a joint company-union committee. The module had been used many times before with ample opportunity for improving it. The teacher had substantial experience with the particular PLC and with auto plants. The class was scheduled for 80 hours (two weeks) at a well-equipped community college.

The class contained 12 journeymen electricians with varying degrees of experience with PLCs. The instructor estimates that two of the twelve attended for less than 20 hours, and six others for less than 60 hours. Some used the class time to read newspapers, one worked on his private business and one played computer games. One thoroughly mastered the PLC, and one novice became reasonably proficient in simple programming.

It would be correct to hold those electricians who did not master the material responsible for their own failure. On the surface, they seem to fit the stereotype of lazy workers taking advantage of time off the factory floor. But the issues go deeper than that.

The company had refused a request to assign the electricians to jobs that involved PLCs beforehand, to stimulate interest and allow them to use the skills. The curriculum was generic, not based on plant examples or programs. Thus for most of the electricians there was no connection between training and use. Most believed it unlikely that they would be assigned to work on PLCs in the near future. Up to that point the company carefully restricted which electricians got to do such work and they saw no reasonable chance that they would get a PLC assignment even if they asked. In some ways, not learning was a defense. One cited a previous experience of being sent to class and then not being able to work on the corresponding equipment for more than a year. By that time he had forgotten almost everything and looked foolish as his supervisor kept pointing out that he had been trained, hadn't he?

The lack of any reasonable connection with what they actually expected to do at work meant that, for most, the appropriate attitude was the same as for a hobby, namely, you spend as much time and attention as is enjoyable, then stop.

It is noteworthy that the one electrician who did develop expertise brought to class programs from machines he was assigned to in the plant, to work on and discuss with the instructor. Besides not being part of the curriculum, this behavior violated company rules.

Second, there was little connection between the training plan and the workers' framework. The pedagogy was totally wrong for adult education. It treated the worker as an empty vessel to be filled with the appropriate layers of knowledge. No respect was paid to the learner's experience as the best starting point; the instruction focused instead on modules derived from a Taylorist "task analysis." (For discussion of a better approach to training see Saganski, 1995.)

Why don't the workers object to the inadequate training? They feel powerless and see no connection to their work lives.

Why doesn't the union object? The union representative who stopped by each day to pick up the timesheet said nothing about the members' lack of participation. The workers are not complaining and prefer the training time to their regular work assignment. Getting people paid time off can be useful politically.

Why doesn't the company object? The company needs to conduct training to fulfill contractual obligations. Consistent with its interest in horizontal rather than vertical bundling of skills, the company is not interested in most workers getting advanced training. Indeed, the failure of the training might even be to the company's advantage: the inadequacy of the workforce even after such "training" is one of its chief arguments for moving skilled tasks out of the bargaining unit.

Why don't the instructors object? Because the training work is well paid, and if class time is shortened the instructors get free time. Almost anything is acceptable as long as the company and the union are both happy.

Soft Skills and Bureaucratic Structures

Unfortunately, all too much of current training follows the pattern described above. On the whole, companies pursuing lean production are not particularly interested in helping union members develop advanced technical skills. What they do want is a more flexible workforce, but management flexibility is decreased when worker skill translates into power and resistance to management. Management is most interested in training that can grease the process of work reorganization. And therefore much of the large sums of money supposedly devoted to training goes to the soft skills of work reorganization--problem-solving, interpersonal communication, "thinking outside the box"--and management's view of the demands of global competition. Another major portion is used to purchase the cooperation of unions by providing union-appointed jobs as program administrators and facilitators.

• Identify Skill Development and Training needs for active employees in the areas of basic education, job related, and interpersonal skills.

• Design promotional materials and activities to encourage the expansion of Joint Union-Management efforts in our society.

• Sponsor appropriate activities to provide a forum for national experts from labor, academia, business and government to convene and deliberate upon the future of Human Resource Development.

• Authorize studies, demonstration projects and research activities on topics of mutual interest and importance.

• Monitor and evaluate National and Local Joint Training Committee Activities

• Investigate other career and training counseling alternatives.