Internal Labor Market
Recruitment in a Changing Labor Market
Mitchell Shipping Lines is a distributor of goods on the Great Lakes in the United States. Not only does it distribute goods, but it also manufacturers shipping containers used to store the goods while in transit. The name of the subsidiary that manufactures those containers is Mitchell-Cole Manufacturing, and the president and chief executive officer is Zoe Brausch.
Brausch is in the midst of converting the manufacturing system from an assembly line to autonomous work teams. Each team will be responsible for producing a separate type of container, and each team will have different tools, machinery, and manufacturing routines for its particular type of container. Members of each team will have the job title "assembler," and each team will be headed by a "leader." Brausch would like all leaders to come from the ranks of current employees, both in terms of the initial set of leaders, and leaders in the future as vacancies arise. In addition, she wants employee movement across teams to be discouraged in order to build team identity and cohesion. The current internal labor market, however, presents a formidable potential obstacle for internal staffing goals.
Based on a long history at the container manufacturing facility, employees are treated like union employees even though the facility is nonunion. Such treatment was desired many years ago as a strategy to remain nonunion. It was management's belief that if employees were treated like union employees, there should be no need for employees to vote for a union. A cornerstone of the strategy is use of what everyone in the facility calls the "blue book." The blue book looks like a typical labor contract, and it spells out all terms and conditions of employment. Many of those terms apply to internal staffing, and are very typical of traditional mobility systems found in unionized work settings.
Specifically, internal transfer and promotions are governed by a
Mitchell Shipping Lines is a distributor of goods on the Great Lakes in the United States. Not only does it distribute goods, but it also manufacturers shipping containers used to store the goods while in transit. The name of the subsidiary that manufactures those containers is Mitchell-Cole Manufacturing, and the president and chief executive officer is Zoe Brausch.
Brausch is in the midst of converting the manufacturing system from an assembly line to autonomous work teams. Each team will be responsible for producing a separate type of container, and each team will have different tools, machinery, and manufacturing routines for its particular type of container. Members of each team will have the job title "assembler," and each team will be headed by a "leader." Brausch would like all leaders to come from the ranks of current employees, both in terms of the initial set of leaders, and leaders in the future as vacancies arise. In addition, she wants employee movement across teams to be discouraged in order to build team identity and cohesion. The current internal labor market, however, presents a formidable potential obstacle for internal staffing goals.
Based on a long history at the container manufacturing facility, employees are treated like union employees even though the facility is nonunion. Such treatment was desired many years ago as a strategy to remain nonunion. It was management's belief that if employees were treated like union employees, there should be no need for employees to vote for a union. A cornerstone of the strategy is use of what everyone in the facility calls the "blue book." The blue book looks like a typical labor contract, and it spells out all terms and conditions of employment. Many of those terms apply to internal staffing, and are very typical of traditional mobility systems found in unionized work settings.
Specifically, internal transfer and promotions are governed by a