Workplace reform and Weddels staff : a study in retrospect of staff perspectives

This dissertation addresses the question of the extent to which the concept of workplace reform has been compromised by the closure of the Tomoana (Hastings) plant of Weddel New Zealand Ltd. The Tomoana meat processing company in Hastings was part of the Weddel group that went into receivership on 19 August 1994 with the loss of approximately 1800 jobs. The company introduced an ongoing range of workplace measures, starting in 1991, and these measures were still continuing right up to the closure. The meat processing industry has been going through a series of restructuring measures since the late 1970s largely because of various trading difficulties and a sharp decline in sheep numbers. Weddels attempted to improve their position in the market by introducing Total Customer Service ("TCS") supported by International Standards Organization ("ISO") certification and Occupation safety and Health ("OSH") requirements. Alongside these measures was a cost saving and efficiency programme of various procedures such as teams, flatter management structure, skill-based pay system, redundancies and a wage cut of 13 percent for most workers. The on-site union officials were heavily involved in the implementation of TCS but once the delay 1993 announcement was implemented the union was fraught with internal problems resulting in a change of president. All the workers on site, approximately 1800, were put through an introduction of TCS. For the majority of workers that was the last time that they had any direct input into the changes until the wage cuts on May 1993. The workers reluctantly accepted the agreement negotiated by their union on the proviso that all workers would be assessed and reskilled so that their pay would reflect the work that they did. This was never acted upon because the system was too costly. Research of the literature found that workplace reform is an ill-defined concept because there has been no uniform approach that can actually pin-point and say with confidence, "that firm is applying workplace reform initiatives". However testing a number of defining characteristics, found in the literature on workplace reform, against the firm's change initiatives may demonstrate whether those initiatives satisfy various definitions of workplace reform. Those defining characteristics are embedded in a participative and cooperative model involving all the stakeholders in a firm. Was the concept compromised by the closure of Weddel? To ascertain whether this was correct the author reinterviewed a number of participants who had been part of a previous study on the initiatives introduced at Weddel Tomoana. In addition, to get a national picture of workplace reform, a key group of external participants were interviewed. What transpired from the evidence is that workplace reform initiatives at Tomoana were dominated by quality issues and cost saving measures. The participative and cooperative environment through involvement was management driven. The degree of involvement of all stakeholders in the initial stages of the change process was a marked improvement by meat processing industry standards. However this was short lived once management embarked on cost saving and efficiency measures. The trust that was in evidence in the initial stages gradually dissipated. The conclusion is that the concept of workplace reform was not compromised at Tomoana because it never fully met the criteria as defined by the characteristics found in the literature. "Therefore the Weddel experiment was indeed something considerably different from workplace reform"