Joblessness is the highest it has been in more than 25 years, and assembly plants have definitely seen their share of layoffs. The Labor Department puts the number of manufacturing jobs lost during this downturn at 1.3 million. However, the severity of the economic predicaments of the big and famous American car manufacturers may be obscuring one aspect of the relationship between a modern assembly worker and his employer:

That employer needs that employee in a major way.

Business Down More Than Layoffs Are Up

As credit to consumers and businesses has contracted, orders to assembly plants have dried up in short order. This has inevitably led to significant production cuts at factories. Authoritative estimates on these cuts approach 15 percent. Manufacturers, meanwhile, have cut payrolls less than 10 percent.

In other words, business is down more than layoffs are up. Although some employers may like to see that attributed to their own kindness and consideration, the more likely scenario is that its cheaper to keep skilled assembly workers than to let them go. In fact, in some cases, letting skilled assembly workers go is the equivalent of shutting down the factory, or at least some major part of it.

Assembly Workers: Not Dumb and Getting Smarter

As many clients of contract assembly outfits have happily discovered, assembly workers are far from dumb. Contract assembly companies are able to take on various types of jobs and do each one well, rather than only working with one particular industry. What ever happened to the "average guy" stereotypical image of the assembly worker that just pounds the hammer and then goes home and has a beer? Granted that was a stereotype to begin with, but its becoming more untrue by the day.

In a modern assembly operation, the easy stuff has been automated. Low-skill assembly workers have, in many cases, been replaced by machines. But someone has to make sure those machines are running properly, doing their job. Just learning to deal with some of these highly specialized and complex machines can take months or even years. Employers rightly look at assembly workers who have experience working with important machinery as a valuable asset.

Its not easy to let such a valuable person go.

A Mutually Beneficial Relationship, With Options For Both Parties

Part of the "average guy" stereotype touched on above was that assembly workers wanted to stay in the same job forever, or at least didnt have other options. Today, for a modern, trained, skilled assembly worker, thats not necessarily the case. Todays skilled assembly worker can produce at a rate unmatched by the assembly workers of yesterday. Thanks to extensive training, mastery of multitasking, and knowledge of complex machinery, todays skilled assembly worker can feel confident that, truly, the factory would miss his or her services.

That may not mean complete job security, but it does mean something. It means that, in the modern assembly plant, employee and employer appear to depend upon each other in an equal and mutually beneficial way.

Relationships like those, a good deal for both worker and boss, are capitalism at its best.

Source

The Wall Street Journal