How did UAW plants perform in the 2003 Harbour Report study of auto plant productivity?
Its widely assumed that nonunion assembly plants invariably have higher productivity than unionized facilities in fact, we wish we had a dollar for every time weve read about inflexible union work rules holding back the productivity of the Big Three U.S. automakers. In the real world, a wide range of factors affect a plants productivity including vehicle design, quality of plant process engineering, condition of equipment, management, volume, steady flow of quality parts and the overall robustness of a companys manufacturing system. Based on the Harbour Reports standard of hours per vehicle (HPV), the top unionized assembly plants in North America compared favorably to their nonunion counterparts. • The UAW represents workers at four of the top 10 assembly plants in The Harbour Report North America 2003: Ford Motor Co.s Atlanta (UAW Local 882) and Chicago (UAW Local 551) assembly plants ranked third and fourth, respectively, and GMs Lansing M (UAW Local 602) and Lansing C (UAW Local 65
