SOME PROBLEMS OF OPERATION be. |
troduce new employees to their representatives. A modification of
this plan which may seem preferable in some situations is that fol-
lowed at the Dennison Manufacturing Company where representa-
tives are furnished with the name of each new employee and with
a copy of the booklet containing the representation plan. Itis then
the representative’s duty to hunt up the new workman and explain
the plan to him when he presents the booklet.
TRAINING NEW REPRESENTATIVES IN ROUTINE OF THE PLAN
We have dwelt at some length upon the necessity for measures
intended to inprove the effectiveness of management representation.
Employee representatives are in need of somewhat the same treat-
ment. Their need relates principally, however, to the routine
workings of the representation plan rather than to company policies
or to the wishes of their constituents. This need is met in a small
degree in most companies by brief remarks by company executives
and employee chairmen at the first general meeting following an
election of new representatives. A more thorough-going effort to
prepare employee representatives for their duties is that illustrated
by the practice of Swift & Company. In the plants of that com-
pany each new employee representative is furnished with a set of
five small pamphlets whose titles indicate the nature of their con-
tents:
What it Means to be an Employee Representative.
How an Employee Representative Serves on a Committee.
How an Employee Representative Handles a Grievance,
How the Employee Representative Takes Part in Meetings of the Assembly.
How the Employee Representative Can Know the Views of Those Whom he
Represents.
Each booklet is made the basis of discussion at a meeting which is
attended not only by the instructor and all of the newly elected
representatives but also by one of the oldest and most experienced
employee representatives sitting at the time in the assembly. The
purpose of his presence is to prevent any possibility of suspicion that
8 These pamphlets have been reprinted in Calder, John, Capital’s Duty to the
W age-earner, Appendix III, pp. 308-320.
3
