An Eclectic View: Social management

Tanneries have always needed people to do the (often labour-intensive) work. Before automation, that often meant hundreds of workers doing manual work. As division of labours developed, the manual work was separated from the specialised/skilled work (which includes people management). Anywhere in the world, now, the trend is to automate as much as possible and to see how many expensive workers can be taken out of tasks that can be automated and placed into work that cannot be automated.
Jack Ma famously said: “...if we do not change the way we teach 30 years from now, we're going to be in trouble”, because what we currently teach our ‘kids’ is a 200-year-old knowledge-based education focus. Workers in the future will not need to be taught knowledge that can be looked up on the internet. Future students must be taught problem-solving and higher-level cognitive functions – analysis and synthesis. Artificial intelligence can already do all the lower order cognitive activity. 

So a factory that can handle and move 2000 hides a week through automated processes will need minimal workers, largely due to a 24-hour machine working culture and the profitability that comes with a significantly lower wage bill. Workers can add to the “value add” proposition of a company by being moved out of automation areas into new areas that will significantly add to the value of production. An example of this was the movement of workers out of the front-line till operating positions in European supermarkets into picking/packing of online purchased goods. In other words, supermarkets significantly increased cash turnover with the same amount of workers.
South Africa tries to resist this idea by claiming that supermarket shopping packers are creating jobs and asking shoppers to scan and pack their own groceries will result in higher unemployment. Till operators and packers do create jobs, but they lower business profitability – they are a direct cost to the business. High business costs are a leading driver for failed businesses, staff lay-offs, and de-globalisation of foreign companies from developing countries. In other words, the global economic slowdown is increasing unemployment as businesses, in the real world, cannot sustain real business losses.
Further to the idea of non “value add” employment, businesses must realise that “value add” positions can move into non “value add” positions with technology development. Washer women (who used to wash clothes at the river side) were usurped by washing machines – no-one is suggesting that society moves back to those kinds of jobs. Where did those women go? They took other types of jobs in society – maybe even higher skilled more “value add” positions. The skill creep in society is one of the factors that drives increasing national gross domestic product.

Increased skill
Without a doubt, the skill level of tannery workers in most positions is climbing and is expected to climb more as automation and a “problem-solving” focus is required. Low skilled workers are generally paid lower wages, which creates a tension between the employer and the employee as there is a constant battle that is waged between paying for a low skill wage and what a worker perceives they should be paid. The trade unions and staff associations (and collective bargaining) are the natural solution that has been naturally selected for that resolves this tension.
Moving retrained low skilled workers into higher skilled jobs will not be able to change the unionised mindset, but the general decrease in the numbers of workers in a company does diminish the “voice” that the workforce has. According to Dumont et al. (2012) technological and increasing skill in developing countries is diminishing collective bargaining, and this may be a portent of what happens as the skill base in companies increases over the long-term

Future requirements
There are statutory and union obligations that companies must consider in employment practices - these will be protected going forward and rightly so. However, the tension that exists between an employer and an employee has never been as high as it is with practices like:
quiet quitting
home working
increased statutory employee protections
anti-meritocracy sentiment
employment de-realisation - a disconnect between what is happening in the real world and how an employee imagines the situation
rising entitlement
These employee trends mean the pendulum has swung towards the employee and employers find themselves in a difficult position - adapt to the new situation, or fight back. A compromise is always the best way forward, so it is useful to consider how both paths are achieved.

Adaptation
Table 1 below shows the current certifiers of social sustainability - carefully developed systems that acknowledge the statutory and NGO positions for social protections. Adapting to the current social sustainability expectations means creating internal policies that protect workers as is currently expected by international norms. Table 1 frames a range of systems that can be chosen which matches the situation and style of the tannery. Adaptation may require some tweaks to tannery mindsets and working culture.

Table 1. Current social sustainability certifiers.

Adaptation means a full engagement of the principles of the International Labour Organisation’s Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (1998) and major international brands expect a full engagement with these principles.

Fighting back
It is not unfair for all employers to expect that the pendulum (that currently favours employees), will swing back to a more central position. Fighting back (legally) is a bit more complicated than an adaptive strategy. It requires some cultural shifts - that seem to be accelerating in international politics. More conservative, traditional, trends are appearing with people slowing down progressive change to bring stability back into society. Reality is the catalyst of these changes with people realising that some of the nice to haves (listed below) may have to be parked for the meantime until practical implementations of more extreme ideas can be found:

binary rights conflicts - where two equally relevant rights are in conflict
better ways of decoupling unemployment from corporate losses
global energy and financial stability
realistic alternatives to meritocratic promotion strategies
Peter’s principle prevention
corporate strategies against the Dunning-Kruger effect

The list above is not exhaustive, but highlights where current employment may have lost its way and will need to be corrected to provide a more level playing field for employees and employers. Employers who have to accept the effects listed above will not be able to successfully stay in business – mainly because the effects above are not grounded in reality and are very prone to subjective metrics.

References
Dumont, M., Rayp, G., and Willemé, P. (2012) The bargaining position of low-skilled and high-skilled workers in a globalising world. Labour Economics 19(3): 312-319.

In the next issue: Doing a return-on-investment calculation for solar panels? Are the high energy prices favouring personal solar panels, but is it impossible to get enough power from solar panels for a whole tannery? The advantages and disadvantages of renewable solar energy.