"Lean" is an updated variant of what was once known as ‘Japanization’, and attempts to bring private sector ‘discipline’ to the public sector – in other words, redundancies, fewer staff doing more work, and laying the groundwork for future privatization.
Workers at HM Revenues & Customs and the Department for Work & Pensions have already started to feel the effects of the "Lean" approach to work. The Public & Commercial Services union (PCS) states: "LEAN is the name given to the way that the DWP want to make the 12,000 job cuts demanded by the Government. It involves changing how work is done or cutting out tasks and then cutting jobs. It makes the job less interesting, stops us giving end to end service and usually does not work because it is all about getting the job done, not getting it done well. If "LEAN" is used at your office you don't have to volunteer any ideas or help to implement it. We all want to be more efficient but not at the cost of massive job cuts."
The PCS commissioned Dr Gregor Gall, Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Herefordshire, to investigate Lean and related corporate practices within the public sector. His study revealed that Lean, which was originally piloted at a Toyota plant in Japan - provoking a strike - was part of an overall neoliberal vision of trimming public services through widespread cost-cutting and cost-saving. Revenue & Customs introduced a regime dubbed ‘Guanteddymo Bay' by staff, in which workers were barred from having coffee, tea, sweets, crisps, photographs or soft toys on their desks because these suggest ‘ownership' and ‘'rigidity'! Instead these items were placed in a locked glass case so that workers could see them but not touch them.
In another instance of "Lean" absurdism, a worker was leaving late one night, and was informed by her manager that she had to clear her desk because the night shift was coming in. When the worker responded that there was no night shift in that office, the manager responded "No, but we are twinned with another office and they do, so this means we have to do what they do."
In the DWP, ‘Lean' means 12,000 job losses, the closing of 200 offices, and perversely enlisting their own staff to identify short cuts in business processes that can be used to cut jobs. Staff are required to state at a weekly 15 minute meeting what they believe can be cut. There are strict rules at these meetings - no critical opinions can be expressed.
This plethora of piffle is the thin end of the wedge in terms of the increasing corporatization of the public sector. Ironically, the more the sector attempts to slash staff and services, the more money they are willing to squander on pointless ‘management consultants'. Although consultants' ideas very rarely work, they are being paid huge sums to draw up new ways of ‘lean working'.
"Lean" is simply the culmination of a long trend of the public sector ethos being replaced by an obsession with handing everything over to private companies and leaving people and services at the mercy of unregulated markets. Despite the fact that this is now an utterly failed economic model, the Con-Dem coalition is now determined to finish what Thatcher started, weakening public finances, and diminishing terms, conditions and pay for public sector workers.
We now know that privatization has dramatically increased inefficiency, waste and corruption in the railways, prisons, schools, and privatized utilities whilst slashing pay, conditions and service quality.
Cooperation with "Lean" is simply agreeing to assist senior management in their task of identifying cuts in services and staff, and an overall deterioration of working conditions. It will be necessary to organise resistance and non-cooperation with Lean across the entire Council, and across the public sector nationally. Refusing to attend the "Lean" training course is an essential first step.
