NUMMI - or what General Motors learnt from Toyota and then took too long to implement

This American Life had an interesting two part audio series on the General Motors Fremont plant in California. This was General Motor's worst plant. Then as part of a joint venture with Toyota the work force was sent to Japan to learn how to make Toyota cars. The plant turned around so much that in the end the cars they were making exceeded the quality of Japanese cars.

NUMMI

NUMII (2015 update)

Media treatment of industrial action

In A Different Strike Story Victoria Rollison compares how the media reported and framed a strike by Fairfax journalists and strikes by employees of other organisation.

When reporting on industrial action the media usually frames the unions as being the villains and the customers and employees the victims.

By contrast:

So, how are the journalists framed in the story? Are they villains for disrupting newspaper consumers? Nope. Are they framed as villains for disrupting the profit-making venture they work for and for hurting the company’s capacity to keep other staff employed, thereby threatening more job losses? Nope. They are framed as the victims. The victims of the job cuts. The victims of terrible business decisions. The victims of a workplace dispute which has led them, unhappily, to have to strike to have their (incidentally, already very powerful) voices heard. And better than that – they are also framed as the heroes, for standing up for their rights, for not letting the company get away with doing something wrong, for, yes, you guessed it, showing the brave, respected characteristic of solidarity.

Is declining union membership driving inequality?

Nicholas Kristof in The Cost of a Decline in Unions writes that up to a third of the increase in inequality in the USA may be due to the decline in private sector unions.