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Indiana Local Brings Work Back from China

February 10, 2006

Most headlines linking "work" and "China" introduce a sad story of lost jobs, distressed communities and workers down on their luck.

In Huntington, Indiana, IBEW Local 983, representing workers at Carrier's United Technologies electronics components plant, is writing an exhilarating story of workers and employers working together to keep jobs at home. The plant has already hired 89 new IBEW members to retrieve manufacturing work that was outsourced to Asia in 2002.

In the summer of 2005, Tyler Brown, Local 983's business manager visited the plant's new manager to discuss the potential of bringing runaway work back.  Brown emphasized his membership's role in increasing the productivity of existing assembly lines by five percent in 2004.

The following fall, the plant manager, Joel Jerabek, invited Brown to participate in a strategic planning meeting with the plant's senior management staff to discuss the future of manufacturing operations.  "Surprisingly enough," says Brown, they were talking about growing the work force at home, not shrinking it further.  While most of the plant's components enter heating and air conditioning systems, UT was actively developing plans on how to increase its market share in grill systems for fast food restaurants.

In November, some union members were assigned to brainstorm sessions with management over methods to increase the productivity and overall business operations within the plant.  "These productivity initiatives," says Brown, have resulted in ideas and a plan that promises to "help UT Electronics Controls remain competitive for years to come."

Under the old production regime, for example, printed circuit boards were moved from one station to another in large racks.  Now, work flow is improved by keeping a stream of boards coming without stopping to load racks. 

William Davis, who served as Local 983's president for 11 years, credits plant manager Jerabek for recognizing the strength of joint labor-management action during his prior service as the firm's fiscal officer.  Under the parties' joint work design process, union workers were rotated, for a time, between jobs that were traditionally filled by management, including human resources and quality control.  "This helped hourly people understand the business," says Davis.

Grievances were reduced from 300 to 20 per year by focusing on issues like overtime sharing, initiating measures to hold both union members and managers accountable for above-board dealing.  Some conflicts are inevitable, says Davis, but the work design process is "like a train moving forward that can't be stopped." Numbers tell the story.

When UT's former owner, Hamilton-Standard, moved its electronic component plant from Converse, Indiana, in 1990 to Huntington, there were 300 employees.  Now the plant employs 625 and is expected to reach 700.

Today, as UT finalizes plans to bring back 33 thermostat models that were previously outsourced to China, an increase of 300,000 units per year is projected.

Business Manager Brown is anxious for the opportunity to address the next IBEW Manufacturing Conference about how the membership of Local 983 struck back against outsourcing.

"Local 983 has shown that when the creativity and problem-solving skills of union workers are released on the job, seemingly impossible obstacles, including outsourcing, can be crossed," says IBEW President Edwin D. Hill.