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'Slow it down': a phrase the industry could do without

Date Posted: November 14 2008

By Mark Breslin
(Another in a series)

One small almost insignificant chain of words is uttered on thousands of union jobsites across North America every week. It is spoken to apprentices foolishly, impulsively and often with an ominous tone. This little four-word phrase is costing union contractors at least $1 billion per year. It is part of the root cause of loss of union market share. The jobsite phrase is: "Hey, slow it down."

I have the opportunity and privilege to speak to tens of thousands of apprentices each year. Training Directors, Business Managers and Contractors trust me to stand before their young members with messages of personal responsibility, commitment, opportunity and work ethic. For this I have generally an hour or two.

And most often I see on their faces an engaged and motivated hunger. A burning desire to "be something" as they sit there being empowered to change both an industry and their own lives. But this emotional and intellectual impression I am trying to leave upon them has its limits. And it must stand in contrast to the other messages that these young builders of our future are going to hear on the jobsite. And they hear these messages every day.

I guarantee you that one thing they are hearing with some regularity is, "slow it down."

How do I know this? Because I ask them. Recently I spoke to two groups of union craftsmen at opposite ends of the nation, in totally different unions. Each group was in excess of a thousand field guys, mostly apprentices. I simply asked them how many have had their fellow workers tell them to "slow it down."

Out of a thousand, approximately 600 hands go slowly up in the air. Why slowly? Because they are looking around to see if everyone is going to be honest or not. They don't want to be the only guy that admits that there is a stupid, outdated, low-performance tradition alive and well in today's competitive marketplace. The same results occur at nearly every program where I present.

Now in one case I had a bold young man stand up and ask me, "why do I need to finish the job today if I have 30 years to finish it?" There are a lot of ways to answer that interesting question and here are a few: 

  • How in the hell did he get that mindset in the first place?
  • Who told him that was OK?
  • What kind of field culture is actually in play when no one is looking?
  • How do the rest of his peers feel about that statement?
  • Was his viewpoint shaped in apprentice school by instructors and contractors?
  • Has he read Survival of the Fittest or had apprenticeship peer to peer discussions on competition, productivity and the challenges of our industry?
  • Does he understand how his effort relates to his compensation, pension and continued employment status?
  • How much money is his substandard performance attitude going to cost his employers over the 25-year lifetime of his employment?

"Slow it down" is a mindset - not an event - on a jobsite. "Slow it down" should have died decades ago. Telling an apprentice to "slow it down" should, in my view, result in an automatic termination. So why does it occur? Because we are failing to focus enough on workplace attitudes, values, behavior and peer to peer performance expectations. And the really crucial question is, do they in fact slow down their performance as a result?

The amount $1 billion assigns a value of just $50 per year in lost productivity per union craft worker in North America due to "slow it down." A rough estimate of less than two hours of union wages and fringes per guy based on two million union craftsmen. I think that estimate is probably very low.

But worse than the billion dollars lost is the idea of our trying to build a High Value - High Performance brand and market share while dragging the anchor of old school union entitlement behind us. These mindsets cannot be allowed to expire naturally with the old school generation's retirement. In an era of unfunded liability, tough market competition and demographic change, we need to aggressively and ruthlessly stamp it out. We need to focus intensively on giving apprentices the tools to respond to these challenges in the field.

High Value = High Performance. If we allow anything less, we will not just slow ourselves down, but invite the union industry to come to a grinding halt.

Mark Breslin is a strategist and author specializing in labor-management challenges. He is the author of Survival of the Fittest, Organize or Die and coming in 2008 Alpha Dog. He addresses more than 50,000 labor and business leaders each year in North America. Coming soon a new Breslin Book for apprentice instruction : Million Dollar Blue Collar: Managing Your Earnings for Life and Work Success. More on his work and profile is available at www.breslin.biz.