But it was the lights that most irked Joan. They were bright fluorescents, fine for traditional paperwork but not for the computer era. Management, pressed by employees, took out many of the tubes; and yet Joan says some glare-ridden workers still wore sunglasses.
She also complains that the company wouldn’t even offer the operators eye examinations, an irony, considering that she was processing health claims.
Again, Joan was a union activist—as a result of her experiences—and some managers may recoil from the very notion of clerks organizing, and yet in her litany of complaints about working conditions, there was not one with which most ergonomics professionals would quarrel. Had management listened to her on those issues, in fact, it would have been doing itself a favor. Forcing the workers to strain their necks, backs, and eyes is hardly the road to higher productivity and profit. It would have cost several thousand dollars at the very most to change the lighting. Corporate bureaucracy may or may not have allowed the workers to be consulted in selection of the terminals, but there is no reason—other than a misdirected passion for discipline and order—why the company couldn’t have let Joan change the level of her screen.
Joan’s experiences are a good argument for the Canary-in-the-Mine Theory of Labor Relations. In the days before electronic gas detectors, coal miners carried canaries into the pits. The birds’ lungs were more sensitive than theirs to poisonous fumes. And watching the canaries, many a miner saved himself and others.
Novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., used the canary-in-the-mine parallel to describe artists and writers serving as an early-warning system to call attention to social ills. And workers like Joan, “troublemakers,” are your canaries. You may not agree with them, and you may aggressively fight them, but before making up your mind, at least listen to them. They can anticipate the concerns of less vocal workers scared of losing their jobs.
“Well,” you ask,“what about my authority as a manager? You knuckle under to the troublemakers once, they’ll come at you again and again.” Confident executives, however, will avoid this misplaced machismo. They will assert their authority more productively, letting workers have a voice in working conditions but, in return, demanding good, steady production, which, after all, is the bottom line. When your stockholders receive dividends, how many will think, What slobs—their VDTs don’t even line up at the same level!
Ideally, of course, your people won’t have to prop up their machines at all, because they’ll have helped you choose easily adjustable screens and other equipment.
“When I help design new computer systems,” says Robert Waters, an ergonomics specialist with a background in psychology, “I try to find out who’ll be using them. Then, if possible, I’ll seek out their opinions.
“If you do that, people won’t feel so threatened. It will be their equipment, too, not just the company’s. They won’t think, I don’t like it, it’s bad for me.”
Richard Koffler, editor-publisher of the Ergonomics Newsletter, also recommends giving the worker a voice in equipment selection: “If you can do it, try it. They’ll tell themselves, ‘I wouldn’t want to look like a fool because I chose something that wasn’t good.’”