Any document with a working title that reads, "Collaborative Production and the Irish Boom: Work Organisation, Partnership and Direct Involvement in Irish Workplaces" is unlikely to fly off the shelves. But it is providing riveting, if difficult, reading for Irish trade union leaders and employer representatives in talks on how to develop social partnership.
It shows clearly what everyone has suspected - that the close working relationship between employers and unions at national level is not being replicated in the workplace. As such, the results are bound to inspire keen debate in the run up to any new national agreement to succeed Partnership 2000.
The report is based on the first detailed survey of how partnership is working at a local level in the Irish economy and the news is bad. While it confirms that "experimentation" in new work practices and employee involvement in change was widespread, it also shows that most of this change is management driven.
Its findings show that frequently quoted official figures can be misleading. For instance a 1996 European Commission funded survey showed that 58 per cent of Irish enterprises had some form of team working, compared with a European average of 47 per cent. On closer investigation the new study shows that in only 15 per cent of cases were employees allowed to select their own team leaders and in 47 per cent there was no reduction in the number of supervisors, suggesting that "in many Irish workplaces teams operate alongside traditional hierarchical relations".
The survey also sought to differentiate between different types of team working. It took two basic models: the Scandinavian model, which permits greater autonomy to team members, who are drawn across a variety of skill groupings and provided with extensive retraining; and, the Toyota model which puts strict limits on team autonomy and tends to use fairly homogenous groups of workers doing routine tasks.
It states that organisations which use teams based on the Scandinavian model were considerably more likely to report improvements in organisational performance along indicators like reductions in costs and through-put times, improvements in quality and, most strikingly, increases in total output. They were also likely to indicate a decrease in sickness and absenteeism levels and reductions in the number of employees and managers employed.
But it found that the type of team working most widely used in Ireland was the Toyota model. "Only 0.3 per cent of Irish companies have adopted the Scandinavian model, which compares with a European average of 1.4 per cent and 4.6 per cent in Sweden." Even Britain "a country not normally associated with workplace innovation or . . . a booming economy" had a higher incidence of such practices than Ireland.
Changes in staffing levels were decided unilaterally by management in 65 per cent of unionised enterprises surveyed and in partnership with unions in only 14 per cent. Similarly, changes in promotional structures were decided unilaterally in 77 per cent of cases and in partnership with unions in 11 per cent.
Perhaps most telling of all were the findings on the approach adopted by unionised enterprises to formulate plans for major strategic decisions such as mergers, acquisitions and divestment of plants. In 92 per cent of plants this remained a management prerogative, and some 6 per cent had some form of direct employee involvement.
In unionised and non-unionised enterprises the greatest involvement by employees was permitted in the comparatively low level, although crucial, production driven areas such as work practices, flexitime and initiatives to encourage greater employee participation through activities like suggestion boxes, team briefings and quality circles.
The report also questions the ability of the Government, the trade unions and the employers to promote social partnership. "The Government support for innovation can best be portrayed as positive but largely non-interventionist," it says.
It suggests that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has moved significantly away from a traditional adversarial attitude to support "partnership and new forms of work organisation" as a vital part of its survival strategy in a workforce with declining trade union density.
Its harshest criticism is reserved for the Irish Business and Employers Confederation. This "has a declared policy of favouring partnership and employee involvement, but it is clear that sharp divergences of view exist among its membership on the desirability of partnership with unions. IBEC might also be disposed to weigh in the balance its support for partnership against the advantages that might accrue to employers generally from a continuing decline in union organisation".
In spite of a decade of social dialogue and national agreements, the report states that "deadlock, stalemate and ambivalence characterise the activities of the social partners at workplace level much more than active collaboration to promote productivity coalitions".
