Comments for Conn Selmer Strike Blog-home http://connselmerstrike.com/Blog Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:12:21 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Comment on by admin http://connselmerstrike.com/Blog/?p=71#comment-3 admin Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:12:21 +0000 http://connselmerstrike.com/Blog/?p=71#comment-3 Reflecting more on the article it seems the company’s long term planning should not have changed so quickly. If you’re going to outsource in a different country, you’ve done your research, devastated you labor force and then have a change of manufacturing plan is just not good business. I wonder if the investors that we listened to on their internet phone conference with Messina ever figured it all out. What the workers were given in the contract was $21 an hour tops, the average pay before was maybe around $26 an hour. What the company really wanted to pay a NON union labor force was maybe $12-$15 an hour. Surely the older work force given the times would not have been so arrogant to the pay difference unless there was something else.<!--more--> That missing element according Robert Allen was a guarantee that returning strikers would have a job and that manufacturing would remain in Elkhart. Although verbal mouthing of such was made by low level company negotiators nothing was committed to contract. Hence the Elkhart Truth reporting of Jerry Stayton saying we all had jobs to go back to was true (in what union officials had heard) but the now wise union workers from previous contracts were too smart to fall for verbal language. The company knew Pro Bach production was very profitable and so were step-up horns like the TR-200, however the company felt they were “putting dollars in every case of student line horns”. People who worked next to me did magic to the student line horns, they did acceptable work that passed inspection and made the most money. So why was the company losing money on rates they set? The reason is managers passing bad work only to be rejected at the end of the plant. Sometimes they convinced the ever changing plant supervisor to approve their decision. Some of the passed problems were pits in brass found in the polishing room, bad acid on the horns from flux used and acid in the air, bad seams that workers asked not to be passed, parts not fitting that horn mounters still had to fill with solder are just a few. I myself found and reported leaks from water testing student line horns which I was not supposed to be checking only Pro was my job. I asked what happens at the end to these leakers, supervisors told me they try to fix it after lacquer by filling it with glue; otherwise they get striped and go around and around. Redoing the same work or scraping it out is not a labor problem or work process problem it is and remains today a management thinking flow problem, which used labor as scapegoats for easy answers to upper management. If Conn Selmer really wanted to have kept their workers, their workers really wanted to be kept. Reflecting more on the article it seems the company’s long term planning should not have changed so quickly. If you’re going to outsource in a different country, you’ve done your research, devastated you labor force and then have a change of manufacturing plan is just not good business. I wonder if the investors that we listened to on their internet phone conference with Messina ever figured it all out.

What the workers were given in the contract was $21 an hour tops, the average pay before was maybe around $26 an hour. What the company really wanted to pay a NON union labor force was maybe $12-$15 an hour. Surely the older work force given the times would not have been so arrogant to the pay difference unless there was something else.

That missing element according Robert Allen was a guarantee that returning strikers would have a job and that manufacturing would remain in Elkhart. Although verbal mouthing of such was made by low level company negotiators nothing was committed to contract. Hence the Elkhart Truth reporting of Jerry Stayton saying we all had jobs to go back to was true (in what union officials had heard) but the now wise union workers from previous contracts were too smart to fall for verbal language.

The company knew Pro Bach production was very profitable and so were step-up horns like the TR-200, however the company felt they were “putting dollars in every case of student line horns”. People who worked next to me did magic to the student line horns, they did acceptable work that passed inspection and made the most money. So why was the company losing money on rates they set? The reason is managers passing bad work only to be rejected at the end of the plant. Sometimes they convinced the ever changing plant supervisor to approve their decision.

Some of the passed problems were pits in brass found in the polishing room, bad acid on the horns from flux used and acid in the air, bad seams that workers asked not to be passed, parts not fitting that horn mounters still had to fill with solder are just a few. I myself found and reported leaks from water testing student line horns which I was not supposed to be checking only Pro was my job. I asked what happens at the end to these leakers, supervisors told me they try to fix it after lacquer by filling it with glue; otherwise they get striped and go around and around.

Redoing the same work or scraping it out is not a labor problem or work process problem it is and remains today a management thinking flow problem, which used labor as scapegoats for easy answers to upper management.

If Conn Selmer really wanted to have kept their workers, their workers really wanted to be kept.

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