After the Second World War, unionism in the Japanese auto industry was company-based, with separate unions in each auto company.Most company unions played no independent role in bargaining shop-floor issues or pressing autoworkers' grievances.In a 1981 survey, for example, fewer than 1 percent of workers said they sought union assistance for work-related problems, while 43 percent said they turned to management instead.There was little to distinguish the two in any case: most union officers were foremen or middle-level managers, and the union's role was primarily one of passive support for company goals.Conflict occasionally disrupted this cooperative relationship--one company union's opposition to the productivity campaigns of the early 1980s has been cited as such a case.In 1986, however, a caucus led by the Foreman's Association forced the union's leadership out of office and returned the union's policy to one of passive cooperation.In the United States
, the potential for such company unionism grew after 1979, but it had difficulty taking hold in the auto industry, where a single union represented workers from all companies, particularly since federal law prohibited foremen from joining or leading industrial unions.
The Japanese model was often invoked as one in which authority decentralized to the shop floor empowered production workers to make key decisions.What these claims failed to recognize was that the actual delegation of authority was to the foreman, not the workers.The foreman exercised discretion over job assignments, training, transfers, and promotions; worker initiative was limited to suggestions that fine-tuned a management-controlled production process.Rather than being proactive, Japanese workers were forced to be reactive, the range of their responsibilities being far wider than their span of control.For example, the founder of one production system, Taichi Ohno, routinely gave department managers only 90 percent of the resources needed for production.As soon as workers could meet production goals without working overtime, 10 percent of remaining resources would be removed.Because the "OH! NO!" system continually pushed the production process to the verge of breakdown in an effort to find the minimum resource requirement, critics described it as "management by stress."
Question #50.561-03(23639-!-item-!-188;#058&000561-03)
The author of the passage mentions the "OH! NO!" system primarily in order to
(A) indicate a way in which the United States
industry has become more like the Japanese auto industry
(B) challenge a particular misconception about worker empowerment in the Japanese auto industry
(C) illustrate the kinds of problem-solving techniques encouraged by company unions in Japan
(D) suggest an effective way of minimizing production costs in auto manufacturing
(E) provide an example of the responsibilities assumed by a foreman in the Japanese auto industry
答案为什么是D。我选了E
Planter-legislators of the post-Civil War southern United States enacted crop lien laws stipulating that those who advanced cash or supplies necessary to plant a crop would receive, as security, a claim, or lien, on the crop produced.In doing so, planters, most of whom were former slaveholders, sought access to credit from merchants and control over nominally free laborers--former slaves freed by the victory of the northern Union over the southern Confederacy in the United States Civil War.They hoped to reassure merchants that despite the emancipation of the slaves, planters would produce crops and pay debts.Planters planned to use their supply credit to control their workers, former slaves who were without money to rent land or buy supplies. Planters imagined continuation of the pre-Civil War economic hierarchy:merchants supplying landlords, landlords supplying laborers, and laborers producing crops from which their scant wages and planters' profits would come, allowing planters to repay advances.Lien laws frequently had unintended consequences, however, thwarting the planter fantasy of mastery without slavery.The newly freed workers, seeking to become self-employed tenant farmers rather than wage laborers, made direct arrangements with merchants for supplies.Lien laws, the centerpiece of a system designed to create a dependent labor force, became the means for workers, with alternative means of supply advances, to escape that dependence.
The passage suggests which of the following about merchants in the post-Civil War southern United States
?
(A) They sought to preserve pre-Civil War social conditions.
(B) Their numbers in the legislatures had been diminished.
(C) Their businesses had suffered from a loss of collateral.
(D) They were willing to make business arrangements with former slaves.
(E) Their profits had declined because planters defaulted on debts for supply advances.
答案是D，怎么解题
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发表于 2010-8-6 12:13:40
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