unionism and its dilemmas
After restructuring and job relocation at TELMEX, male and female workers experienced dramatic changes in terms of technology innovation, new job profiles and training. Nevertheless, women experienced more remarkable changes in the organisation, because the digitalisation primarily affected the operator department, which was essentially a female occupation as is analysed in ch.4. Meanwhile men’s departments experienced different sort of transformations, as their traditional areas of work received female workers and in consequence this changed the gender composition in the organisation. Male workers did not move from traditional masculine to female jobs; they stayed in the same conventional male occupation.
Male manual workers did not feminise to adapt as women masculinised in the traditional male jobs to acclimatise themselves, mainly, to a masculine environment, space and time. Men did adapt to a mixed gender workforce but in a different way than women. Men initially were defensive to keep their masculine territory and established position at work. However, they had to change their traditional male behavoir to interact with women at work. Nevertheless, in this study I focus on female groups to exemplify the most
dramatic changes because they show the organisational transformation in all their complexity.
(a) TQM as a focus of union participation in company modernisation
As we noted above, the progressive TQM model of employee involvement was adopted and adapted in some privatised companies in Mexico, and this included TELMEX Co. Managers and administrators in such firms valued the new forms of work organisation and administration associated with the Japanese system because they supported developments in technical and material capacities. Indeed, in some cases, managers and also unions idealised the qualities of the TQM model. This was the case in the STRM union when, just before privatisation, workers proposed to TELMEX Company that they should adopt the TQM model in their work organisation (ST29). One of the most important characteristics of this model was the emphasis on improvement systems based on human resources to make certain of quality. The concepts of ‘total quality’ and improvement of quality were understood by managers as systems based in the active participation of workers in production (T11). The most important change that this model offered was the conception of personnel as ‘flexible workers’ which meant that the company had to enrol qualified personnel capable of adapting to new tasks and responsibilities to confront competition (T10). In this context, commitment to the idea of quality involved a vision of new schemes of organisation, and encouraged changes in production concepts, mentalities, values and perceptions of work.
According to the managerial perception, this new approach attempted to establish a closer relationship between the dynamics of market demand and production, especially by paying attention to different customer preferences (ST17). In this organisational tendency in Mexico, flexible production was promoted (to the client’s liking, just in time, and enhancing the quality of the product). Thus, the flexibilisation of work, or the capacity to produce diverse products with the same basic organisation and reduced delay of adjustments, was the solution for enterprise survival. The international debate about flexibilisation shows that this new language of productivity and quality posits political and cultural changes in work organisation and employment relations, though the nature and extent of these changes remains controversial (Garza,1993). On this basis flexibilisation was construed as the most innovative and distinctive operational feature of the electronic era, though critics argued that flexibility also involved costs that fell particularly upon workers.
Thus the Japanese model influenced work organisation, systems of training and retraining, and the rotation of personnel in different parts of the productive process at TELMEX, and thus flexibility and involvement came to be valued more than the development of specialisation of workers. In this approach the company encourages the formation of multifunctional managers who know all parts of productive process. As one of the founders of the TELMEX training system said, quality and innovation have been important elements in the KAIZEN system, where education in quality plays a central part (Elguea,
1994). These systems demand the participation of all company members to make proposals and take initiatives to contribute to the company goals and especially to the solution of production problems. New organisational approaches which were examples of this tendency included polyvalence linked with the extension of functions for each category of employees; just in time production; teamwork; preventative maintenance and total quality control. However, in Mexico as elsewhere, these organisational innovations were rarely combined together, because the application of the quality model in Mexico did not involve a static configuration that passed to the Mexican context without changes (Humphrey, 1995). To adapt this model to particular realities depended on the combination of various factors: firstly, the national context of labour relations; secondly, the types of enterprises structures, and finally the specific industrial policies. These particular circumstances have determined the effects of the adaptation of the quality model in each case.
In 1987, just three years before the privatisation of the TELMEX Company, the management and the union created the first ‘Joint Commission’ on productivity to work in three key areas: technological innovation, training systems and, later, administrative plans embodied in the Services Programme (PIMES). In this Commission, productivity was defined as “the growth of quantitative and qualitative production, quality improvement, labour and life conditions and productive training of workers” (Garza,_2001:87). Workers were motivated to participate in the training system through new organisational forms of
collaboration at work promoted by TQM. Furthermore, the STRM union adopted the modernisation project promoted by the Commission on modernisation as a part of its official union strategy. Thus, for the first time, this Commission contributed to change the STRM perspective on labour action and workers made a great effort to build a new union doctrine to improve the union position in these bilateral relations. However, according to one influential analyst, the participation of the union was improved only in some areas, and in particular he argued that “the union effort succeeded only within the Joint Commissions" (Garza, 2001:88).
It is true that the union primarily participated in the TELMEX total quality model through the Joint Commissions on modernisation, new technology, productivity, training, culture, and health and safety. In this way the senior management of TELMEX Company and the STRM union created the scenario to work together through these Joint Commissions and used the TQM model at work to carry out the modernisation project through a reorganisation based on a ‘new labour culture’ that is analysed in more detail in chapter six. Some of the practical consequences of this TQM model were perceived in the following terms by a female phone worker who had lived through the economic restructuring:
The Total Quality Model sought to change labour culture directly through a new idea of quality and productivity and flexibility during the work process. We changed when we had to work with men in the same
job positions [such as] in outside plant [after the relocation of switchboard workers], or when we had to liaise with different people in the customer service (ST17)
These comments suggest that she recognised that the model contributed to transform some practices in the workplace, not only through new forms of communication with customers, but also through changes in the gender composition of some occupational groups.
During the processes of privatisation and relocation the union and managers shared similar perceptions about TQM as a form of work organisation and a basis for new values at work. In this way, from the shared perspective confirmed in most interviews with managers and workers, the participation of workers in the work process at TELMEX was developed as a productive activity, and this found a broad acceptance among workers. An explanation of the workers’ cooperation in these TELMEX projects could find its origins in two historical moments where workers had already developed an active involvement in the reorganisation of work tasks as part of union activity. Firstly, the dynamic participation of workers and the union in company agendas probably found its base in an earlier period somewhat removed from recent TQM initiatives, namely in their enthusiastic movement as a militant union during the switchboard strike in 1976, when unionists, especially workers of the central department and women of the switchboard section, looked to improve their labour conditions at work by participating with the union in developing
suggestions to be taken into account during bilateral negotiations. Secondly, the STRM then participated actively with managers before privatisation, and through the modernisation projects established horizontal intercommunications between members, officials and managers (ST23). In this respect the STRM experience during the process of privatisation contrasts with a common tendency among unions that are usually inclined to resist changes associated with company reorganisation (Procter, 2000). Instead this background led the STRM union to propose to the company the advantages of designing a TELMEX total quality model (ST30), as both workers and the union were aware of their labour conditions and wanted to improve them.
Nevertheless, this union’s willingness to be involved in task reorganisation and quality initiatives nevertheless also involved difficulties for the union and the workforce. In particular they experienced a movement from collective, union- mediated, involvement to individual worker involvement. Thus a female worker of TELMEX illustrated how the TQM model tended to individualise workers participation when she remarked that ”after privatisation, workers started to experience more individualisation provoked by the TQM approach, especially in terms of individual financial incentives [productivity bonus] (ST30). Actually, these latter developments in TEMEX, involving individual financial incentives and individualisation, helped to change the attitudes of workers at work in further ways and thus to construct a different labour culture, where the total quality model promoted individual as well as collective participation in the work teams to reach the productivity goals.
Such individualised treatment could, however, be experienced as a positive feature if it took the form of new opportunities. Thus a female representative in the union general committee, who experienced the company restructuring as an operator and was relocated to a customer service department after privatisation, drew out further aspects of this change, when she argued that
[This model] includes all workers without gender differentiation, and this model helped to develop individuals in the team work, as well as promote training through a new labour culture (ST17)
In this sense, on the one hand TQM organisation promoted new forms of quite individualised involvement in teamworking collaboration in the company. However, on the other hand, this model also gave more significance to the managers’ role to organise or supervise the relationship with workers simply as individuals, leaving aside age and gender differentiation.
This section has mapped out the distinctive features of management- union interaction around the TQM initiatives at TELMEX and has raised the question of the direction in which this was likely to evolve. The following sections pursue this issue by focusing in more detail on the role of the union and the participation of workers in technological innovation, labour conditions, payment and training systems at the company during the process of privatisation and beyond. While each is discussed separately it should be remembered that for management they are all elements of an overall TQM model that emphasises the participation of workers in continuous improvement
as a human resource strategy to increase productivity. As Mertens (1995) points out, such a TQM/HRM strategy involves the integration of production organisation, technological change, payment and training systems. Thus, the following sections are organised in terms of these elements of the HRM strategy.
(b) Management policies and union responses to technological innovation
Technological change in any company implicates diverse aspects and stages in the labour process. Furthermore, it can be argued that “the function of management as the agents of capital is to control the labour process [and] the introduction of new technology is a means to this end” (McLoughlin, 1988:45), though technological innovation may also serve other priorities that may cross- cut such a control imperative. Thus technological modernisation involves managers and union officers making choices, though these choices are constrained by external factors that may change over time.
Technological innovation had radical implications for both TELMEX and the union, though it should also be noted that workers had adapted to technological changes over the whole period of the last two decades, a point that will be documented in the following section. Technological modernisation initiatives were initially discussed during department negotiations and later on involved managers and union officials.
From the 1980s the telecommunications workers experienced the first effects of technological change. In response the union started to discuss the effects of technological innovation with managers, hoping to improve the working conditions instead of just making salary demands. During the 1980s switch maintenance workers had high control of their existing work. However, they had to work with antiquated instruments because TELMEX equipment was technologically obsolete, while other companies in the telecommunication sector across the world were already introducing technological innovation. Thus twenty years ago both workers and managers were increasingly aware of the pressures to acquire newer technology. During the 1980s phone workers, especially switchboard workers started to talk about technological change, and even initiate a policy debate. Indeed a switchboard worker, one of the representatives of the STRM in the Commission on Gender in the UNT (National Union of Workers), asserted that as a result “…switchboard workers have influenced the initial process of technological change [in their department] (ST18)
One of the probable reasons for this dynamic participation was the information and communication that trade unionists had about the development of technological change in the international telecommunications industry. In 1981, different political groups in the union discussed the implications of the new technology. On this basis, some workers in several departments, including the
central and switchboard departments demanded that the union should make a contribution by running a project on technological modernisation.
A female switchboard operator illustrates her experience of negotiation during that time.
The opposition grouping within the union was very important in the internal union life to build alternative strategies. I consider that during the 1980s, when the technological modernisation process started, the commission in my department, that was the technical section, collaborated actively. I remember that we participated in the commission to review the departmental work agreement with the administration. We [workers] were researchers; we studied Japanese, French, and Canadian collective contracts to see what was going on there about technology, health and labour conditions In such a way, we were not only ahead of the enterprise [TELMEX] but also the union [the STRM] too. We were very far from [ahead of] them because our department contract (“Convenio departamental”) got the best successful influence of the European know-how and, especially, the Canadian [experience]. However, we adapted this influence to the Mexican reality (ST29)
Thus workers, especially switchboard operators, had considered changing patterns at work as an imminent effect of technological change in the national telecomm industry, as it had been happening in other countries. Another female
switchboard worker, who was involved as an activist in that process during the 1980s, said:
We [switchboard workers] started to introduce in the departmental work negotiations the imperative to digitalise the operator area. And the engineer Najera, the manager in this area, told us that this demand should mean personal relocation and he asked us if we were sure about that [proposal]. Then, we explained to him that “history does not forgive”, technological changes are happening all over the world and it is not possible that Mexico is excluded from this process. It is better to negotiate the training of female operators through a pilot programme before this new technology is implemented. New lessons on electricity, algebra, were started. This was to demonstrate to the company that switchboard workers could be inside [administrative and clerical departments] as well as in outside plant [technical areas], centrals or everywhere. This project was proposed by us [switchboard workers]. […] We were the first to ask the company about productivity, information, etc (ST27).
According to this interview, switchboard workers understood the implications of technological change for the telecommunications industry.
This process of technological change was accelerated after the 1985 earthquake, when the central plant located in Mexico City was almost destroyed and new technologies were introduced. At this stage the administration contracted subsidiaries to implement the restructuring project to evade confrontations with
the union. On the one hand, after this policy was implemented, a member of the union felt that, during this period of technological implementation, “the union [STRM] started to lose control over the labour process” (ST29), because department representatives lost authority to negotiate issues related to the work process when departmental work agreements disappeared in favour of job profiles. On the other hand, partnership relations started before privatisation, and most of the workers and managers in the company worked together in the restructuring process. As a manager said, “Managers and the union studied the implications of new technology in the organisation. They analysed together diverse international experience to build their own model” (T12). A former switchboard worker who experienced the technological change argued that “those experiences that came from workers as well as opposition groups in the union were adopted by the leaders of the union” (ST27). In the same way, another female worker, from the maintenance area, expressed the view that the contribution of workers to the technological change started in the workplace and later the union capitalised politically on this participation of workers to build the union’s programme to negotiate with the company.
During the second part of the 1980s workers and the union were more aware of the effect of technological change on TELMEX. After the privatisation of TELMEX (1990), digitalisation was the first technological change that had important implications for the telecomms industry (Dubb, 1996). The main characteristic is that digital technology requires very little maintenance. “This
technology has both electronic control (allowing for “touch tone” dialling, instead of the emitting of dial pulses) and an electronic network, meaning that there were circuits connecting the different nodes of the switch, rather then jumper cables” (Bolton, 1990:78). The TELMEX modernisation was supported to digitise the whole network. “In 1990 TELMEX digitised 30.9 percent and by 2001 100% of the network” (T12). Thus in TELMEX a manager said that after privatisation “the company has carried out all its technological goals programmed to 2002” (T12).
During the period immediately after privatisation and relocation there were no direct lay offs of operators: “though the technological change resulted in a