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By Patricia Proven Employment in the global aerospace industry has dropped dramatically since 1990, with United States job figures falling from about 1.3 million to 800,000 workers and, in Europe, from about 600,000 to 400,000 workers. To understand factors involved in this sharp decline and to evaluate appropriate responses, MIT's Labor Aerospace Research Agenda (LARA) - a program based at the Center for Technology, Policy, and Industrial Development since 1998 - has embarked on new studies expanding early work on instability in the aerospace industry. Research about the aerospace workforce has taken on increased urgency, said LARA Co-Director Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, given disruptions in the civil aviation sector since Sept. 11, as well as complex shifts in military aerospace. "We're feeling a crisis in aerospace employment," said Cutcher-Gershenfeld, "and we are only beginning to catalyze action around appropriate responses at the local, regional, national, and international levels." Over the past year, LARA researchers contributed a white paper, testimony, and informal input to the National Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry. Their work and that of other researchers culminated in the Final Report of the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry, issued Nov. 18, which offers recommendations for revitalization of the U.S. aerospace industry. In highlighting massive consolidation, job losses, and revenue cuts over the past two decades, the report calls attention to faltering underpinnings of the aerospace industry. The report also offers a vision that seeks to catalyze leaders in government, industry, labor, and academia to ensure this industry's future prominence. Declining employment corresponds to declining sales in both the United States and Europe. But the LARA research findings indicate that changes in employment have been greater than shifts in sales, which may be due to increases in productivity or other factors. Productivity and offsets issues, complicated by the worldwide economic downturn, make up part of the picture on employment decline, said LARA Associate Director and CTPID Research Scientist Betty Barrett. "Workers are more productive and companies are using work organization systems, such as lean manufacturing, to reduce costs," she said. But, when sales are down due to the current global economic slump, high productivity puts more jobs at risk. Offsets, or foreign production provisions, are controversial, said Cutcher-Gershenfeld. "Employers see offsets as essential to business growth, but unions are critical of 'selling jobs in order to sell planes,'" he said. LARA researchers are now working with the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), its employer members, and key union representatives to systematically address these workforce challenges. In January, members of the LARA team joined industry, labor, and government representatives at the Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA) national meetings to present a special panel on 21st century challenges facing the aerospace workforce. The panel's success has prompted a request for a special feature on this topic for the IRRA publication, Perspectives on Work. This feature, edited by LARA Project Manager Susan Cass, will offer articles from the academic community, industry, government, and labor. IRRA also accepted LARA's proposal for an enlarged double session at the Association's 2004 national meetings. Such an expanded session is rare and significant, Cutcher-Gershenfeld said. It not only represents a form of outreach to the industry by the association, but also allows for deeper investigation into aerospace workforce challenges. After LARA's work on the Presidential Commission on Aerospace, the US Department of Labor approached the program with a research grant to examine operations at Boeing/IAM St. Louis, where both union and employer agreed to compress approximately 47 job classifications and numerous sub-classifications into eight integrated categories. The initiative's elaborate just-in-time delivery system for relevant skills training among 3,000 employees allows more flexible utilization of the workforce by the employer and increased worker employability. This new, flexible job structure is linked to three recent developments: a lean implementation initiative, a High-Performance Work Organization partnership (HPWO) improving labor-management relations between the union and company, and an initiative for just-in-time delivery material flow reaching out into the supply chain. The LARA research team, led by Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Barrett, and new Research Assistant Lydia Fraile, expects to complete the investigation this summer, and then publish the work as a case study. In addition to these initiatives, Cutcher-Gershenfeld has a new working paper underway. The study, entitled "Lean Transformation in the US Aerospace Industry: Appreciating Interdependent Social and Technical Systems," examines the employment and organizational performance implications of lean transformation across the national aerospace industry. A key preliminary finding, he said, is that narrow, technically focused lean initiatives are associated negatively with employment growth. Broader initiatives that focus on both social and technical aspects of lean transformation associate positively with employment growth, he added. The analysis draws upon data from more than 300 US aerospace facilities that responded to LARA's random, national sample survey in 2002, in addition to data from their 1999 facility survey. LARA Co-Director Thomas Kochan recently completed a working paper, "Out of the Ashes: Options for Rebuilding Airline Labor Relations," written with Andrew von Nordenflycht, Robert McKersie, and Jody Hoffer Gittell. This paper examines labor management relations and employment levels in the U.S. airlines sector. Amidst current labor policy debates in Congress, the paper aims toward building multi-stakeholder support as a foundation for stability and revitalization in the airlines sector. Meanwhile, Barrett is nearing completion of a case study that describes the efforts of Iowa-based aerospace company Rockwell Collins and the IBEW, which represents its workforce, to develop new, effective methods for helping workers maintain skills and develop new ones. "They are doing this at a time when the economic situation in the aerospace industry is quite difficult," Barrett said. The Rockwell Collins study, to be published this summer, will increase LARA's stock of case studies in MIT's digital archive, DSpace. LARA and other CTPID programs are early adopters of the DSpace initiative. Learn more about the Labor Aerospace Research Agenda including case studies, policy recommendations, and ongoing research at http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/lara/ New LARA Researchers Focus on Workforce Development, Work Restructuring Two MIT researchers will join the Labor Aerospace Research Agenda (LARA) team through 2003 to work on projects involving workforce development and work restructuring.
Research Assistant Lydia Fraile's background dovetails with LARA's interest on workforce development and effective institutions. Fraile is completing a PhD in political science this spring. Her dissertation studies Spanish unions' involvement in local partnerships to tackle issues of training and employment, exploring the connection of these new strategies to collective bargaining and government policy. Fraile holds a law degree from the University of Salamanca, Spain, and a MA in political science from the University of Colorado at Denver.
Adam Seth Litwin, a
PhD student in MIT's Institute for Work & Employment Research, is
a LARA research affiliate. Litwin comes to MIT from the Board of Governors
of the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., after conducting research
at the London School of Economics and in the private sector. With an array
of multidisciplinary interests in labor markets, labor policy, and strategic
human resource management, Litwin will use the aerospace industry as a
lens to gain insight into the causes, correlates, and impact of work restructuring.
Program Links: CMP | Ford-MIT | IMVP | LAI | LARA | LSI | MSL | MITIQ | T&L |
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