Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 3, 1981, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press wednesday june pages 57-64 latest Stock prices from Toronto and retailers urge interest raterelief759 japanese staff sings of Mission business by Gerald utting Toronto Star Osaka a new Day is beginning at the giant Iba Raki to Plant Here it is . And the who work Here half on the production line Are starting off in the usual Way with a Quarter of an hour of exercises. They stand in the Yards or by their desks in the offices or by the Assembly lines messenger and top executive alike do exercises to piped in music. Konosuke Matsushita believes in having a sound mind in a sound body. And what Matsushita now 86 and still As Sharp As a tack says goes at Matsushita Enki which Means Matsushita electric. Matsushita personally launched the company in 1918, with a capital of 100 yen Worth about in those Days and started making Light bulb sockets in his own Little House. His wife Murrien helped. They were very Young then. When he sold enough sockets to hire a couple of employees Mumeno used to Cook the meals for everybody. Even in the 1930s, when the Matsushita Plant had grown a bit mrs. Matsushita still Cook the meals for the Bachelor employees who lived in a dormitory provided by the company. Today those cooking bowls and the first connector made by the Matsushi tas Are proudly on display in the company museum at Matsushita head quarters in Sadoma another Osaka suburb. In the meantime Matsushita elec tric Industrial co. Ltd. Of Osaka has grown to be the world s largest manufacturer of consumer electrical appliances. It has annual sales of about billion and employees of them working outside of Japan. Canadians May not be familiar with the name Matsushita but they certainly know its Brand names Panasonic National Technics quasar Jevc. Wanning up Back to Ibaraki a suburb of Osaka and the present Day the workers at this Plant doing their physical jerks know they Are not alone. At every Matsushita Plant and office in Japan every other employee is doing the same thing. Lumbering up. For work to music is a pretty common thing in Japan they even play the music in suburban rail Way stations and thousands of commuters do exercises while waiting for the morning train. But at Matsushita you can be sure that everyone from the president Masaharu Matsushita who is the foun Der s son in Law and adopted his last name to the cleaning ladies and even the grand old Man himself probably Are warming up for the Day s work. Here in the to Assembly Section at Ibaraki the workers Are divided into teams of about 10 Young women in dark Blue tunics and five men in dark Blue tunics. Part 2 of a 5-part series. Japanese Industry philosophy workers must feel confident and wanted and each member of the company is ready to fulfil they Stop their rhythmic prancing just before 8 . And Bunch up and Start pounding each other with Little chops and massaging one another s Muscles. It s great fun japanese Mas Sage right on the production line As if they were Samurai getting ready for Battle. In a sense of course they Are. Off in other plants the Sony Sanyo Hitachi and other electronic armies Are also going into action for another Day. But before actual work starts there Are two ceremonies the company Creed and the company song. One member of each work team stands on a Little platform in front of his or her colleagues and holds up a Large card written in japanese and reads a sentence. The rest of the team then recite aloud the remainder of the obviously Well known phrases. This is repeated seven times. Then one of the team jumps up and gives a Little speech. What has happened is that the work ers have recited the company Creed. The idea is that each member of the As Matsushita Calls employees will Start the Day s work remembering that Matsushita does not exist primarily to make Bucks or yen but to fulfil a Mission. Feel confident the Mission is to provide useful things to society and to develop the minds and talents of the workers. Profit in the Creed of Konosuke Matsushita is the Way society rewards the company for its contribution. The company says that besides re freshing recognition of the company Mission the morning meeting gives everyone a Chance to get used to Mak ing a Public speech and to make communication smooth in each workplace employees learn to practise punctuality at workshops to double Check whether communications Are carried out accurately and smoothly and to speak out their thoughts to Matsushita in other words wants its workers to feel confident and wanted an essential in an Enterprise that is determined to stay ahead by constantly upgrading what it produces. The morning meeting ends with the company song. Everybody sings proudly a Bright heart overflowing with life linked together Matsushita electric time goes by but As it moves along each Day brings a new Spring. Let us bind together a world of Blooming Flowers and a verdant land in love Light and a dream we Trust our strength together in har Mony finding happiness Matsushita the song ends. Matsushita employees have been singing this Way since 1933. Westerners May smile at this. We Are too sophisticated for such simple stuff. But anyone who thinks that japanese workers Are. Unsophisticated is Proba Bly bound for the Industrial Scrapheap. For Matsushita s dream has been immensely productive and profitable As Well. Konosuke Matsushita s philosophy is that electrical appliances should be made cheap enough through mass production so that anyone can afford them. More than anyone else in the world probably he had been the Man who put transistor radios into the hands of every peasant in the third world and a Rice cooker in most asian peas ants huts. The Ibaraki Plant opened in 1952 with 27 employees producing Black and White tvs. Up to the end of february it had turned out 66 million sets. And Matsushita has four other to plants in Japan. Today Matsushita produces sets half of them color units each month from its five to plants in Japan. Nobody has Ever been Laid off at Ibaraki or any of the other 110 Matsu Shita electronics plants in Japan. After the 1973 Mideast War when the Price of Oil soared in what is called in Japan the Oil the United states imposed a special tax on sales of imported equipment. Japan itself went into a recession. Nobody got the axe for three months production at Matsushita plants was reduced by 50 per cent. Nobody got the axe. The average worker starts at about yen a month equal to Cana Dian but gets 17.1 months pay a year because of the Bonus system. That works out to starting pay for a 40-hour five Day week. Vacations 12 Days a year to Start 20 Days after 10 years. There Are 12 Public holidays a year in addition. The company has a Large Chain of recreation centres throughout Japan for its staff. At the Ibaraki Plant itself there Are sports facilities for baseball Tennis volleyball. The company has a Large Range of benefits that add to the real pay of the workers ranging from health insurance to funeral subsidies for workers or members of their immediate families to the right to buy company products very cheaply. Uniform pensions urged uniform provincial pension Legisla Tion is a High priority with Harold Thompson newly elected chairman of the Canadian life and health insurance association. Thompson president of Winnipeg based Monarch life Assurance co., said in an interview that we Are most anxious that legislation be uniform so that National employers do not have to change their pension plans from province to province. There Haven t been great differences in provincial legislation he said but the possibility of greater differences grows As some provinces introduce new legislation. Saskatchewan for example has recently passed Forward looking legis lation for the Benefit of employees but it is quite a step ahead of other provinces which May now have to catch up to close the discrepancy Thompson said. In a statement today Thompson said pensions will continue to occupy the at Tention of the association and governments throughout the year. The association has developed a system of pension portability that any employer could implement on a voluntary basis and which has attracted much in Terest he added. Part of his Job As association pres Bosses care so do workers Thompson most ident will be to discuss issues such As pension regulations insurance policy contracts and tax legislation with fed eral and provincial ministers and officials and generally keep open the lines of communication he said. Thompson was elected chairman of the National association today at its an Nual meeting in Ottawa. He was association president. The theme of the meeting is issues concerning the disabled and Handi capped Thompson said and the insurance Industry and the association is financing a study of rehabilitation at Queen s University. He said association members Are concerned that disabled persons Are Able to return to a productive and Satis factory work life and spend a great Deal of time learning up to Date re habilitation methods. Toronto Star when Neil Nagano came to Toron to to Start a to Assembly Plant in 1972, he was shocked by the attitude of Canadian workers toward their jobs. At the Start i had a bad impress says the electronics Engineer who runs the Panasonic to Assembly Plant on the Queen Sway. I thought How Lazy they Are they won t do anything until they Are told to do it they had no initiative. They were resentful. After five or six months though i came to realize the problem was not so much the workers basically but their attitude toward management. They thought of management As an opponent to be confronted. I was shocked. I have never worked for any management other than Matsu Shita the giant japanese electronics company that markets its products in North America under the names Pana sonic Technics quasar and i can t say that Canadian manage ment is bad because i have never worked for Canadian employers. But i can say that Many of the workers who come Here have obviously worked for employers who considered that their labor was just something to be bought and paid for like a commodity. I think that is bad management because a worker is a human being and we should not think of buying and Selling human beings and their labor. This leads to the workers caring Only How much an hour they Are paid not about the Quality of what they produce or the Success of the company. This is looking at things in a very Short term perspective. In Japan per haps because of different management factory workers feel their future is bound up with the company and they care about whether it succeeds or Nagano 43, is vice president of Matsushita Industrial Canada which oper ates the to Assembly Plant on the Queen Sway. Now a Canadian citizen he is still fiercely Loyal to his Parent organization. He arrived in Toronto with a handful of japanese technicians to launch the Assembly operation. They moved into a big empty factory installed machinery and started assembling Panasonic to sets. There was myself and five technicians from Japan and we hired 30 production workers. We made units that year 1972. Good place for Plant now we have 230 workers and we produce to sets a year. Fifty per cent of them Are exported to the United states. The factory was started in Canada because Toronto seemed a Good place for a Plant and we were not producing the big color picture tubes in Japan. We buy our picture tubes from Ria in Midland ont. The Chassis is imported the cabinets Are made in the Plant right Cabinet making is the most skilled operation at the Plant says Nagano. It takes three months to train an Assem Bly line worker for the electronic As Sembly jobs but several years to train a Cabinet maker. Nagano says As a Canadian citizen he is quite Happy to defend Matsushita s presence in Canada. It s not taking jobs away from canadians he says but is creating jobs and earning foreign Exchange because of its big proportion of exports. Less than one third of the factory Price represents imported on a Large set retailing at the factory Price is about of which is imported and represents Canadian added value. In fact we Are allowed to import components duty free because the government wants us to provide Assembly jobs in Nagano says of the final Cost of on a big set about would be wages. The government itself is the biggest single beneficiary he says. There s a. Federal tax of nine per cent on top of the wholesale Price and seven per cent sales tax on top of All in Ontario and 50 per cent of our company profit goes in tax. Also All of our 230 workers pay income tax. Of the retail Price of at least ends up in Nagano says Matsushita s ideas of the company and its workers being one family Aren t so alien in Canada when one considers the factory could col lapse if the workers did t continue to produce a Good product. Loyalty on the part of management to the workers produces loyalty from the workers in return. Without loyalty and caring by the workers Quality control goes out the window. That s one Good reason Why a highly competitive business really could t afford to treat its workers except As valuable members of the at the Queen Sway Plant they Don t sing the company song the Way they do every morning before work in Japan says Nagano a Little regretfully. It seems True thai canadians Are More interested in Money while in Japan the workers Are not Only Loyal to Money but Are very proud of their work and of the company. But even though it is difficult Here we try to do things As close As we can to the spirit of Matsushita in Japan. For example we have had problems but we have never Laid anyone off Here in Nagano stressed. There was no Union at the Queens Way Plant until 1980, when the United electrical workers organized it. Meets Union regularly we re not against the says Nagano. As a matter of fact i was still a member of the Matsushita Union in Japan when i started operations at this Plant. We try not to have confrontations Here. I attempt to Deal with problems As they come up to meet with the Union representatives regularly to Settle things rather than save All of the disputes for some big annual workers at the Toronto Plant average an hour with fringe benefits Worth about 10 per cent More Nagano says. This is lower than the wages at a to factory in Japan but there they Are making All of the components As Well As assembling them. Operations Are relatively simple at this Plant. We Don t need highly skilled ;