This post is the first of several that consist of transcripts of conversations with frontline workers, inspired by the audio histories complied by the late Studs Terkel. My intention here is to let the workers speak for themselves. You can listen to it as a podcast below!
All right, Gil Crosby back with you. Pleased to be back with you. This is the start of a series of podcasts on my upcoming book, View from a target, which is a book about the experience of being a frontline worker in an organization. In manufacturing organizations, that’s the hourly workforce. Could be that you are a frontline worker in a social service agency, but it’s the same kind of experience and it’s the most important voice in really developing an organization, is to engage people at every layer and not have management trying to do all the thinking, which is when they try to impose solutions on the workforce. That generally doesn’t work out. And so I’m really pleased today to have my friend and a guy I worked with in Texarkana, Texas, at an Alcoa Rolling mill. He was the Vice President there, Pat Roberson. So Pat, it’s just great to have you here.
Roberson
Thank you, Gil. It’s great to be here.
Crosby
So how are you?
Roberson
I always love to hear from you.
Crosby
Well, it’s great to hear your voice too. So just go ahead and talk about your experience as an hourly worker. Let’s start with, what was life like in the organization for you before we ever showed up?
Roberson
Well, it was a small plant. We had about 300 hourly workers and about 200 company people that worked in offices in human resources and shipping and all that. And we didn’t have a union yet when I first went to work there. It wasn’t a union shop. And I had been an old union guy but I wasn’t really responsible for bringing the Union in, but when I saw it was coming I got involved in trying to help. But the atmosphere was us against them. Controversial. Everything had to be a fight. Everything was a 10. It was just all a big emotional mess. And then nobody was getting anything they really wanted. And I think it made people … I think it’s human nature just to kind of idle when you’re dissatisfied with a situation that you don’t feel like you can change in any way.
Crosby
Sure, that makes sense. It’s pretty demoralizing and of course that could happen with a union or without, that people are demoralized.
Roberson
(Laughs) I was fixing to say that’s exactly what happened. We voted the union in, we still had the issues. I was one of the union stewards at the time and we just … oh man … it was it was just a fight. Everything was a fight. And they loved sending me down there because they knew I was gonna chew on somebody. Me and my counterpart Sean Matthews. He was a good man that we lost unfortunately to Covid.
Crosby
Yeah, he was a great guy. He became the union president. He was an emergency responder when Covid hit. A terrible loss.
Roberson
Oh yes and he was … Shaun forgot more about diplomacy than I ever knew, and we would do the good cop bad cop thing (laughs). You know, he would be the good cop. I’d be the bad cop. But we really wouldn’t get these things done. I mean, you know, everything was a fight. Every, every, every inch of the way it was. And, something you said rang a bell with me. Hourly employees wanted to do the company peoples job. Tell them how to do that job and the company people they wanted to tell hourly people how to do their job. So they both had their place. And they both were better at their specific realms of influence. But they were both trying to tell the others what they were doing wrong.
Crosby
Yeah, they were stuck in a lot of blame.
Roberson
Blame. It was just all blame, you know. So you know, I wouldn’t have any idea how to do the human resource job that the people that are human resources people. I know it had to be miserable for them because I was miserable (laughs), and I hated going to work. I really hated it because I knew soon as I walked in that gate, I was fixing to start getting hammered. “So and so did this.” “I need you to do this” and “file a grievance on this.” Some of them wanted to file grievances against each other and it was just … it was horrible (laughs).
Crosby
Well, you know, it reminds me of our mutual friend who passed away in 2019, who really came up with the title of this book, Cotton Mears, what he said about his experience at Warrick. Before we ever showed up, he said that there were only two emotions. One was we were either pissed off or we weren’t pissed off, and that was it. That was the whole range of emotion.
Roberson
That was it. And that’s a darn good description of what we were.
Crosby
And probably pissed off more often than not.
Roberson
All the time. And speaking of Cotton, I was sad to hear that he had passed. I really enjoyed meeting Cotton and he was such a neat guy. Such a sincere man. He really believed in the in the mission. The workshop that we went through, he was there when I went through it. And your dad came down one time. It was just a great experience. But we’ll get into that. But he was such a good guy. You know, it changed his life. And it changed my life. And that’s, I’m probably at that end of the spectrum. I’m sure there’s people who go, “Yeah, it worked, but, you know.” All of a sudden, I started having an ability to have a say in how we were working. So, yeah, I liked it. And for me, it was life changing because I applied it to my everyday life.
Crosby
Well, that’s one of the things I love about it is, people, if they start working on taking responsibility for their own reactions, that transfers right outside of work, right to your home life, how you relate to family and so on.
Roberson
That’s right. Everything’s not a 10, and it’s easy to attach emotion to everything. And I think it, you know, in some ways it’s a human thing that we just, you know, kind of our first reaction is to be stand offish. At least some of us. You know, it’s a kind of a mechanism of protection I guess. It can turn into something much worse. And that’s what had happened in our facility.
Crosby
Yeah, and once people feel like they’re not being respected or heard, if people get pushed, they push back. Including management people. They get pushed, they push back and the whole thing becomes personal.
Roberson
It really does. And you know, we had another experience. We had a really good manager, plant manager, that worked with you on everything. The next guy comes in, everything’s a process problem. We’re doing everything wrong. And, well, he approached it in a way that, “I’m telling you this is what’s gonna happen, and you’re gonna do it or you’re gonna hit the gate,” you know. And actually that’s when the union got voted in, was when that guy was plant manager. I won’t mention any names because it wouldn’t be nice to do that. And he went on and had a good career somewhere else, but he really, really, really turned the tide on that particular facility going union.
Crosby
Well, you know, he was probably right. Everything probably was being done wrong to some extent (laughs). But he went about it by trying to force solutions on you and the other workers.
Roberson
Yes. You know I hate to say this but people in the south are stubborn. And they don’t like being told they’re ignorant or being made to feel like they’re ignorant, when they may be ignorant of something. Ignorant has kinda gotten a bad rap. You tell somebody they’re ignorant, (laughs) boy they get mad at you. But it just means you don’t have the knowledge of something.
Crosby
Sure. And calling them ignorant is ignorant.
Roberson
It’s ignorant (laughs).
Crosby
(Laughs) it doesn’t help any.
Roberson
It doesn’t help anything (laughs). In fact, it makes it much worse. Well, you start building those walls and man, they start getting reinforced and reinforced. And before long, you just got two big walls up against each other.
Crosby
Where everything’s just another battle, basically.
Roberson
Another brick in the wall, to quote a great song I love.
Crosby
Yeah. Yeah.
Roberson
It’s just another brick. Well, we are going to stick this up there, too, and it’s gonna be another stubborn thing. And if they try to bring this up, I’m bringing this up and, you know, it never ends. It’s poison for the facility. It’s poison for the workforce.
Crosby
It is. It’s poison for everybody. It’s poison for productivity too.
Roberson
Absolutely. And safety.
Crosby
Yes. And safety. So you were in Alcoa and there they had been an emphasis on safety. But when you were all pissed off at each other. That probably wasn’t helping much.
Roberson
No. It was horrible. And everything changed. It didn’t just change overnight. It wasn’t like it was just you flipped the switch and everything’s alright. But what it did was it gave everybody, and I’m talking about the workshops. It gave everybody the tools to proceed in a manner that would be productive and would be, not conciliatory, but would be a way for both sides to understand the other side’s issues and continue to process the metal and get things done better.
Crosby
Yep, makes sense. So you’re talking about the T-groups. We call that “Tough Stuff.” And just a couple things about that. One is, as you know, it was an hourly worker that first said that phrase. He was sitting in the back, you know, being pissed off for a couple days in the workshop (Roberson laughs), and then at some point it just hit him. And he said this, he said, “You know, this isn’t soft stuff. These aren’t soft skills. This is tough stuff.”
Roberson
Yes!
Crosby
And that’s what we stuck with after that. I just want to say one more thing we do that’s different, because we believe in it. We mix people together when we’re training people, we want the Union President, the Union people of course, in the workshop, we want the plant manager, we want all layers of management mixed in with the hourly people so they can work on skills while they talk about work issues.
Roberson
Well, and that’s exactly what happened. We had the workshops and we did that. But we also started people going into the offices, people coming out of the offices, going into the shop and experiencing just the atmosphere around the machines. It’s loud. It’s hot. You smell … and everything. You know, it’s a shop. So these things are clanging away. And I actually had people say “I had no idea this is what it was like.” And I said “Yes, it’s loud, but you become numb to it after a while. You get used to it.” If you wear your ear protection, if you wear your proper PPE, it’s not gonna hurt you. But (laughs) it’s scary to someone who’s never been there.
Crosby
Yeah, and it’s a hard enough job without, you know, having people being pissed off at you and saying that you aren’t doing your job.
Roberson
Well yeah. If everybody’s mad in that situation (laughs), it’s miserable.
Crosby
Yep, and that’s how it is in a lot of places, unfortunately.
Roberson
Well, I hear it all the time and I have suggested … of course I have little or no power over anybody … (laughs) but I have suggested to union friends that still work in shops or union shops that they might try to contact y’all because of how much it helped. And you know, some think I’m selling out. And some listen and think, you know, I know this guy didn’t sell out. He’s not a sell out. But it was just such a good thing for me. And it’s such a good thing for our facility. Man, it was great.
Crosby
Well, I wanted just to go back again to Cotton. So when you talk about transformation there he was in the pot rooms and he was a union steward, and he says he got elected because he would fight about anything (Roberson laughs). Didn’t matter what it was. Didn’t matter who was right or wrong or anything like that. Anybody would come to him and say, “Hey, the management’s doing this!” He was the attack dog. He’d just go and fight. And he realized at some point with, you know, my father’s help in particular, that, it was bad for him. It was bad for the place. It was bad for the workers.
Roberson
It was bad for everybody.
Crosby
You had a role like that too. I think you said you had nicknames, right?
Roberson
Yeah. They called Sean “Little Johnny Cochran” and they call me “Mr. T” (laughs). Or yard dogs. Some of them called me yard dog. That’s an old southern thing. Mean as a yard dog. I did the same thing. I’d fight over anything. I piled grievances up. I flooded them with paperwork. And they resented it because some of it was so petty that it could have been resolved with a phone call.
Crosby
Sure. Or a conversation.
Roberson
Yes, but we were smoking them (laughs). We were smoking them. The desk of their HR department was a stack of grievances. And just everything, like I said, everything was a fight. It wasn’t any, we were trying to work with them. No, it was, “We aren’t working with them on that because they didn’t work with us on so and so.” And it just piles up, piles up, piles up. And, you know, sooner or later it’s going to fall over. And unfortunately, that’s when they shut plants down. And they become so unprofitable that just, you know, no use in running them. And the bottom line is the bottom line. People forget that. And they call it a lot of things, but companies are in this to make money.
Crosby
Yep.
Roberson
And if they can’t make money, you’re not gonna be in business. And in fact, a good example of this happened before y’all came. Our production had gotten down low. We were having problems with shipping. We’re having problems with quality. People weren’t showing up. They were late all the time. And you know, I saved so many guys jobs that should have been fired. They should have been taken out back and shot (laughs). But they were union folks … gonna be union folks … this was actually before the Union came in. But I was still like, the voice of the of the workforce. And Sean and I, we’d have meetings and we’d talked for people, and be told more or less, “Well, we will take into consideration what you said,” but nevermind. But we’d got down to the point where people were coming in. There wasn’t any metal to run, there wasn’t anything packed up. So we started painting floors (laughs).
Crosby
I’m sure you were all enthusiastic about doing that.
Roberson
Oh it was horrible. And so we would come in and paint the motor room floor. And then the next night would come in and paint the machine floor. And the next night we come in and put another coat of paint on the motor room floor. And we did this every other night for a month. I mean, it had to have a layer of about an inch of paint on it (Crosby laughs). It was busy work, you know, and everybody’s going, “Well, I like this.” And I said, “Well, this is not good guys.” I said “Nothing going out the door. Nothing coming in the door. The doors are fixing to close.” And boy, they started having layoffs and finally the market kind of rebounded and we started running. They were looking at shutting us down I believe then. But it was between US and a plant in Warrick, I believe. But it never came to that.
Crosby
They had fabrication and a paint line and all that kind of stuff at Warrick.
Roberson
Right. So, you know, it was competitive and some of the market had gone overseas. We had lost the can stock, which was a huge, huge market.
Crosby
Right. Well, so that was all like “before.” And you mentioned grievances and so on. So what was it like after we had done some work with you?
Roberson
Well, it changed everything. For one thing, like you talked about, in the group we mixed people together, from the company side and from the union side. We’d already gone union by the time y’all came in.
Crosby
Right.
Roberson
Some of those people I had seen and never spoke to in the five years I’ve been there. It was that kind of separation, you know. You didn’t really wanna be seen talking to those people. Because they were those people. They were the company. So here we all are and we’re in a circle with those people (laughs), and we’re all talking about how we feel about it. And, to me, that changed me to where I thought, you know, these are just humans just like me, everybody the same. I’m putting too much capital in emotion when I should be putting capital into productive conversations that might lead to an outcome that’s everyone can live with. And it’s better for the company so. That made a big difference that changed my life in a lot of ways. Controlling where I invested emotional capital because, like I said, everything’s not a ten. So, things started changing. One of the one of the gripes was channel locks. This is a funny thing. To me it is. I think Pete Velotas was the plant manager when all this was going on, wasn’t he?
Crosby
Yeah, he was. He was there when we arrived.
Roberson
Yeah. So (laughs) one of the gripes … everything to do with aluminum head, cutting head, you need channel locks to do a lot of it. So there’s a need for channel locks on every head setting station. Well, they would get stolen, they would get lost, they would get torn up. He’s having to check him out every shift, and it’s just a nightmare (laughs). People were using it as an excuse to start later, you know, it was just an excuse.
Crosby
And when people are demoralized, they’re more likely to walk off with stuff like that.
Roberson
Right. Yeah. And so. With your advice, I don’t know if you remember it or not.
Crosby
I do.
Roberson
You said, “How much does a pair of channel locks cost? I remember Pete saying, “Well, you know, they’re not much.” At the time. 5 dollars, $6, whatever, it was, $10. “And how much does downtime cost?” Everybody kind of looked at each other like, you know, it’s so obvious. And Pete said, “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna buy one for every every machine out there, and we’re gonna buy an extra and put it in the stock room in case that one gets broke.” And one of the millwright Superintendents said, “Well, they’ll just walk off with them.” And Pete said (laughs), “Well, eventually everybody will have one and they’ll stay on the machine and we won’t have downtime because of a pair of channel locks (laughs). And so, lo and behold, they put them out there. After that happened, I don’t think one pair got stolen, because it was like, “Hey, they were good enough to do this. We need to take care of this.”
Crosby
It was a small thing that mattered.
Roberson
It gave them a little pride in that simple thing. A pair of channel locks. And. I remember thinking, “Why did I ever let that become an issue? And why did they ever let that become an issue?”
Crosby
Yeah, it was a symptom of bigger mistrust and frustration.
Roberson
Absolutely. It was a symptom of a disease, and the disease was, “We’re not working with each other no matter what.” But this, everybody saw this, and everybody thought, “Huh? Well, maybe Pat and them are not selling us out, you know?” And then all of a sudden, we start talking about one of the other things. We never could get our change house stocked. It was filthy. Nobody really wanted to go in there.
Crosby
The locker rooms.
Roberson
Yes. Our locker room. Cause when they built them it was a really nice locker room. I mean I’ve been in older plants, and their locker rooms were clean, but they were ancient. They were dated. This one had shower stalls and changing stalls in front of the showers. It was a nice change house and the ladies was nice too. We had two different change houses right side beside each other. They were identical, they were just separate. So Pete said, “Look, we’re going to take care of that.” We had, they didn’t call it janitorial, it was something maintenance. But they had a guy that was supposedly stocking all this, making sure they were cleaned and everything. We had a cleaning service, but they wouldn’t let them do that for some reason. Supposedly it fell on maintenance. Maintenance didn’t like it. They didn’t wanna do it. But anyways, he fixed that, had them cleaned up, had them all repainted, changed all of the shower heads. Everything. Had the lockers painted. The lighting was dim in some places. Had all that fixed, and people started using them. People started saying, “Hhey, you know, this is really nice.” And they started taking care it. They didn’t throw paper towels down. They didn’t track grease across the floor and not mop it up. That was something else. They had a little like a little closet that they put all the cleaning stuff in. They said if you have an accident if you don’t mind either report it or clean it up. Well, nobody ever reported one. They just cleaned it up. So that changed. That’s an attitude that prior to y’all’s arrival would have never happened. If I would have asked somebody to clean up the change house, I would have been laughed off the floor.
Crosby
Well, it’s easy for, you know, management to, especially in a hostile environment, to overlook something like that. They’ve got so many problems that seem bigger for production and so on that they just overlook some of the small things and don’t realize what it’s like, what kind of a message it sends every day when you walk into a broken place. Basically says that to the workers, “They don’t really give a crap about us.”
Roberson
Right. And you know little things, and on the other side of that coin, people would check out a box of grease. Now this grease they used in grease guns to grease heads and the machines and stuff like that.
Crosby
It’s important.
Roberson
It’s a heavy industrial grease. Well, you couldn’t check out a tube. You had to check out a box. And what you ended up having is one tube of grease used out of a box, and that box spilled and tubes of grease laying around everywhere and they didn’t all get used. And sometimes they’d just throw them away. So, when we were looking at budget items. Our company, they didn’t just open up the books to us, but they more or less said, “Look, this is the cost list for everyday items. Gloves, grease, cutting knives, head spacers. Anything that was on everyday use thing. Gloves, mops, buckets. You realize it doesn’t take long before you have $10 or $15k stuff in your trash can that never got used.
Crosby
On a recurring basis.
Roberson
Everybody said, “Look, break it down. Don’t make people take a bundle of gloves. They’re gonna lose half of them. Give them a pair of gloves. In fact, unless they have a use for it, don’t give them two pair of gloves. Give them a pair of gloves. If they come every day and need a pair of gloves, give them a pair of gloves.” And, that changed everything. People started keeping up with their gloves. They started only getting a couple of tubes of grease. Those operators knew how much grease it was gonna take for to run that machine for a week.
Crosby
Of course.
Roberson
And they knew it wasn’t going to take a whole box (laughs). And they knew that they could wear a pair of gloves … now, working on a working on a sheet metal line, you wear out gloves pretty quickly. But we had these Kevlar gloves that had leather palms and they were made where you couldn’t slice your finger off. And they started instead of going every day and getting a new pair, you know, they started using them until they started getting a little frayed. If it looked like they weren’t going to be effective to keep you protected, they they’d take them back, return them and get another pair.
Crosby
Nice.
Roberson
And that way you didn’t have gloves laying everywhere, thrown down. You had to take that old pair back to get your new pair. It’s just simple things. I know all that sounds petty and small. (Pause) but it made a huge difference. It made a huge difference in production. It made a huge difference in the cleanliness of the facility. It made a huge difference in safety. When people on the lines were asked to be part of safety programs, they listened to them. They listened to what they said. And when they were doing the fencing around the machines … used to be all the machines were just open. If you were to stumble and fall and get caught between that sheet and one of those rollers that would … that would have been a sad day for your family.
Crosby
Yep.
Roberson
And it was possible, especially for new hires. I’ve watched new hires go up and get, you know, we’d have to scold them. “Don’t do that. When this machines running, this thing’s running wide open, it’s running 1500 foot a minute. Let’s just stay away from that. Because it can go horribly wrong quick.
Then they came up with the idea, let’s all get together, talk about what we need, talk about what we need guard, talk about what we need removable guards on so we can work on things. And they started building them. Well, at first they bad overbuilt it (laughs). They just made it where you literally couldn’t run the line. We ran it for like a month and then they regrouped and they said, “Alright, what do we need to do?” And everybody had pretty much the same ideas that worked on those lines. “We need to get in here. We need a gate. We need a removable gate or an opening gate here so when the machines running we can lock it out and get in there and work on it.” And so that that made a huge difference.
Crosby
And those kinds of conversations happened after we started working with you.
Roberson
Oh yeah, they never would have happened before (laughs). It would have been a fistfight before (laughs). No, they never would have happened till we went through the workshops and Tough Stuff and just learning how to talk to each other and work with each other just made all the difference in the world Gil. The people were happier. The people looked forward to coming to work. People’s attendance started getting better. People’s attitudes changed. Everybody, it was more competitive then. It was more like, hey, we’re gonna, you know … I remember my crew one night ran like, oh, I don’t know. An outrageous amount of metal. And the next crew came on, they said, “Aw man, we’re going to beat that.” And so it was high quality, great production, the company was happy, the people were happy. The nights flew by. It was a panacea compared to what we had (laughs).
Crosby
What you were going through, yeah.
Roberson
That was horrible. Horrible.
Crosby
Again, for management and labor.
Roberson
Yes! And it made the difference. That’s something else. You started to see people come out. There would be groups. There would be just regular office girls and guys that work in offices, that you never even knew worked there some of them. And they came into the plant, one of the shop hourly employees, union hands would be waiting on them, to give them a tour and keep them in the safe spots. Because there is inherent danger in any in any mill. So if you follow procedures and you follow your SOPs, you’re not gonna get hurt. But someone who doesn’t know the procedures can wander off and they might get hurt. So we would lead them through the plant and we’d show them each individual machine, introduce them to whoever was working on that machine. They got faces. They got to know faces and names. We still had to file some grievances, but very few, because 90% of what we did after that was negotiated out without having to even start the grievance process. Because the truth is, nobody likes that. It throws everything six months out.
Crosby
Yep, and. And when you say negotiate it out, you mean like just people started talking to each other and resolving small issues.
Roberson
Right. The people that were making the company decisions talked to the people on the floor that were making the production decisions. Those processes have to be important for a plant to work. You can’t, you know, people would say before y’all’s program, “Well, those people down there don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know anything about aluminum. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And I always thought, even then I thought, “Yeah, but could you go down and do their job? You know, because they got a job (laughs),” you know? And so it just opened up all sorts of alleys, for them to come out and see us, for us to go in and see them. They start opening their doors. If you wanted to walk down there and go into the HR department or anywhere in the in the office. You want to see somebody. You walk in there. You talk to the little lady at the front desk. That’s Gwen. And she’d say,”Llet me see if they’re in, Pat,” or anybody “Let me see if they’re in and if they’re in and they’re not busy and you go right back and talk to them.” And so it started helping with people that were actually working with customers talking to people that were producing that customers metal. Now, you would think that would be something they’d do anyway. But I’m telling you, it was so cloudy, nobody could see through it before.
Crosby
Yeah, you mentioned that the customers actually started coming out to the floor also.
Roberson
Yes, that was something else that was so great. We are started having companies come that were using the products we’re creating for the final disposition of the metal, whatever it was. If they making it cans, if they were making radiators or heater coils or whatever they were making. Cans. Truck parts, whatever. And they’d come and they’d say, “Hey, is there any way…” And this was something else that was funny to me. It was a surprise to us and to the people that were working for the company when they bring these questions up. It was like, why haven’t they already communicated this? But what they were doing was bringing people that were actually on the floor in these other places. In management positions, but were actually in the process departments of their particular industries. And they were, they’d say, “Is there any way you can make the edges a little sharper? Is there any way you can get this crossbow out of that?” Nobody don’t know what that is, but people that work on them (laughs). But anyway, everybody would go, “Well yeah, we can lighten up on roller three. We do this and do this.” And we’d run a little bit and they’d go, “Yes, yes, that! Just that flat.” And that would be the procedure from then on. The customer was elated. We were happy because we weren’t getting something sent back. And, you know, it was a mark on you if you got something sent back.
Crosby
Sure, it costs money too. I mean, that’s just waste.
Roberson
It costs money! And it wasn’t like it was a mark from the company on you. It was a mark to everybody. Everybody would go, “Man, you let that get out. Why did you let that (laughs) get out?” If you were playing football, if I missed the block everybody would kind of go, “Man, why did you miss that block? What’s wrong with you?” Well, it’s the same thing. You’re on the team there and everybody’s going, “Man, now they’re going to think everything from Texarkana, Alcoa is trash (laughs).” But it changed all that! People took a lot more pride. We hardly had any returns. We hardly had any complaints. And we changed the way we warehouse things. I ended up getting in the warehouse end of things. Shipping. We came up with this segregation system, to separate the metal where it was easier to pull. And when you got ready to ship it. All that all that was because of the T- group, Tough Stuff, the programs we went through. Those communication skills we learned. All that happened because of that. There is nothing else I can attribute it to.
Crosby
You said that before that the management, the last thing they wanted was for any customers to meet any of the hourly workers.
Roberson
Oh no. They would never, they never bring anybody in. I’ll never forget. I don’t know whether you remember Don Davies or not. Now Don Davies was the union president when y’all first came down there. I remember one time. Oh, I can’t remember his name. He was the CEO of Alcoa. I think he was from Rio de Janeiro.
Crosby
Uh-huh. Yeah, Belda maybe?
Roberson
He came through and he was talking. And of course they brought him over to meet us. And this was before y’all come in, we’d gone union. And the guy says, “Well, you know. You know why y’all’s insurance is going up and it costs so much?” And Don said, “Yeah, corporate greed (laughs!” And we were, you know, we were like, we didn’t care. This guy was so important and we were like ants on a basketball (laughs). But we were on the guy, you know, and he kind of looked at us like, “Oh, my God, these guys are nuts,” you know (laughs). “How is this ever gonna work (laughs?” But I remember, that was the attitude. They bring somebody in here, we’re gonna attack them. Of course they didn’t want to bring anybody in there. (Crosby laughs). I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t have brought anybody in there either. You wouldn’t be caught dead walking into that office by yourself back then either. That’s something else that goes back to what I was saying about what changed. They opened the doors and we could walk in and talk to people and learn things and it was acceptable to do so from the union standpoint and from the company’s standpoint.
Crosby
That’s great.
Roberson
And that was, you know, if you’d have done that before Gil, you would have been ostracized. It would have been, “Hey, these guys are no good. They’re sellouts. They’re going down there and making deals behind your back (laughs).”.
Crosby
Yeah, that peer pressure is hard to buck.
Roberson
It’s hard to buck. And there’s a there’s an ego thing. When you’re pumped up enough, that people have told you enough, that “You’re great! You tear them up! Don’t let them talk to you down! You do this!” You build that up in yourself and say, “Well, that’s what I’m expected to do. I’m gonna do that!”
Crosby
Yep.
Roberson
And after that I thought, you know what I really need to do is resolve their gripes. I need to figure out a way to resolve their gripe where everybody can live with it. And that just changed the way everything happened. We still filed some grievances. Occasionally there would be something. But nobody got mad about it. Nobody took it personally. It was like, “Hey, you know, File the grievance. I understand. We’ll let it go to arbitration and see what happens.” And a lot of times after that, it never went to arbitration. I don’t think we went to arbitration, after y’alls workshops, I think we probably didn’t go to arbitration 10 to 15 times where we were going 10 to 15 times a month before.
Crosby
Wow, what a mess.
Roberson
It was horrible.
Crosby
Well, look, I just want to go backwards a little bit here because I do remember that channel locks conversation. And part of what we did there, we called it a TIPI. It was a a big planning session. And this was after doing some of those other workshops. Kind of get the mood changed a little bit and the way people were relating. But we had a planning session where a whole bunch of hourly workers were mixed in with the management and you guys just looked together at, “What’s really in the way here?” And, “What can we do about it?” And I think some of that stuff about like the locker room got raised in those conversations.
Roberson
They did. All of the pettiness from… That’s kind of an aggressive word. I don’t mean to paint it like that.
Crosby
(Laughs). Well, that’s quite accurate. Petty.
Roberson
I don’t mean people were acting petty to each other in this circle (the T-groups). But what I’m saying is all of the little things that were irking people on both sides of the fence were brought to a head there.
Crosby
Yeah, yeah.
Roberson
“This is what we don’t like. Well, this is what we don’t like. This is what we don’t like.” And then finally after everybody got it off their chest, somebody said, I can’t remember the guys name, but he was a company man, and he said, “Well, I can resolve this right now.” And then one of the union guys said, “Well, we can fix that issue she was talking about. We can fix that. That’s just the process. It works just as good one way as it does the other.” That was the crack that split that division thing. Actually, it was the weld that welded the crack back it together (laughs). It started bringing people together. It started bringing people saying, “Hey. If we can resolve that, we can resolve this.”
Crosby
Makes sense.
Roberson
And we got rid of all of the little things first. And that’s why I say we hardly ever filed a grievance after that because we found out what was keeping us apart was really kind of little things. It wasn’t as big as we thought it was. And it took an outside entity to come in and tell us that because it was so poisoned in the facility, there’s no way that was ever going to be resolved from within. It just wasn’t gonna happen.
Crosby
Well, or at least it took, us helping you guys actually just start listening to each other.
Roberson
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t think we would have ever done that had y’all not come in. I just don’t think it would have happened. I think the plant would have eventually been shut down. Now that facility was eventually shut down. But we were doing great right up to the end. But the market fell out. And there was nothing, it wasn’t anybody’s fault. I mean, Alcoa had to scramble and to shut some plants down, and they kept us going for about a year and a half there when I I think they probably should have gone ahead and shut us down. But they brought in this guy, I can’t remember his name now, but he was the new plan manager and they brought him in to shut us down we found out later. I know that that had nothing to do with rancor between company and union. It was just that the market fell out there wasn’t nothing to do about it. It was right after 911. Everybody was scared. Everybody was slowing up. Withdrawing. So it didn’t have anything to do with anything else. Because right up until that man, we were rolling wide open and breaking records, and we were beating bigger plants.
Crosby
Eventually it reopened, right?
Roberson
Oh yes. It’s three times a bigger footprint than it was when I worked there. It’s huge now.
Crosby
Well, I’m glad for that, because I mean…
Roberson
I’m glad too, because it’s got a lot of jobs.
Crosby
Good jobs!
Roberson
It’s a good. We have a relatively poor area around here. So good jobs are important.
Crosby
Yep.
Roberson
And especially from the county. I mean, Cass County is a pretty poor county in Texas. And so that’s not far for us to go. You gotta go out of county to get a job like that, unless you go to the paper mill up at Domino.
Crosby
Means a lot to people.
Roberson
It means a lot to people and you know. It means a lot to everybody and not just the people that go to work there, but the people that they support, the little shops. The stores, filling stations, the clothing stores out there. Everything’s tied together.
Crosby
Well, I’d like to think that the way you guys were operating after we worked with you was part of the reason why it was attractive to whoever, you know, is now running it.
Roberson
Well it is. And I’ll tell you why. They look at the numbers and they looked at this little engine that could and like I say, we were really a tiny facility. There was, there’s probably 600 people in the whole plant, company and the hourly workforce. You got some plants have 5 or 6000 people in them. Well, we were just smoking hot, so they looked at this and they go, “Hey, look at this. This little plant was spitting out this much product with this many people. Why? Why build a new facility where we can just drop in here? Crank this one up and get that workforce. Obviously, there’s a good workforce in the area.” And a lot of people went back and they took those ideas with them, I assure you.
Crosby
That’s great. That’s just great. That’s good news for everybody. Hey, so I’m just thinking about again the before and after and one of the things I I remember there was that there were an attempt by the company to help improve things and engage people. They were using kaizens. And the workers were pissed off when I got there, they were pissed off about at least one of the kaizens. They were saying, “We ended up doing this kaizen on this stuff that doesn’t even matter. And, you know, we really ought to be, if we’re going to do problem solving, we ought to be doing it on this stuff hat does matter. That was just again, one of the changes that can happen if you’re actually listening to your workers and the workers are wanting to help and really, I think most people want to help, they just get so tired of being kicked around that, you know, they stop. They stop helping.
Roberson
And they get a herd mentality, you know, it’s this group’s a herd, this group’s herd, and we’re all gonna think the same. But yeah, the kaizens I’m not a big fan of, at least the way it was done in our plant.
Crosby
Sure.
Roberson
Because what they did was they come out and they said. “Alright, this is what we’re gonna do.” And this was actually said to me. “We think we’re wasting a lot of time on the floor. We’re gonna start timing how long it takes you to cut a core. How long it takes you to put a core on the mantle. How long it takes to run that piece of metal. How long it takes to pull it off. Take it to shipping. Put it in the segregation. We’re gonna time everything you do, and then we’re gonna come up with a number of what you should be producing.”
Crosby
So that’s just sort of like, when everybody’s pisssed off, now you’re gonna come in and police us on how long it takes.
Roberson
Absolutely! It’s like you’re being, we call it bird doged. You know, it’s like somebodys just sitting there just pointing at you all the time. And man, that went over like a lead balloon.
Crosby
Yeah, yeah (laughs).
Roberson
I remember. I was livid about it. Because when they first presented it to us, they brought us down, and they brought Davies. Sean was vice president then. I was one of the head grievance officers. The political officer. We all went down to meet with them to talk to him about this concept process. And the guy that described it, that was the Gil (laughs) of the kaizen people. He described it in a way that I thought, “This may help.” Because he was talking about doing things that are in our way and us doing things that are in their way. And he talked a good game.
Crosby
Yeah, well, it can work that way, if you got the right conditions.
Roberson
And I’m sure it can if you have the right people administering. But if you give that over to somebody that was one of the biggest adversaries of the people on the floor. And they wanna put the bulldog on. You know, they want to put old yard dog out there. You’re gonna meet with, see how they handle you. And man, it did not go well (laughs0. It was, I remember going into office and chewing a guy out man and I ended up apologizing years later. We ended up being good friends, but he was a company guy and I chewed him up one side and down the other, you know, and he just had his head down at his desk. Wouldn’t even look up at me and. I walked out. I slammed the door. Needless to say kaizen didn’t work in that facility.
Crosby
Yeah. Well, you did say that after we did the work with you, whether you’re a fan of them or not, because of that history, that at least they started to do kaizens on stuff that made sense to, well, also that the workers were saying, “Let’s do it on this.” And they were getting listened to.
Roberson
Yeah, they started to. It was still divided. It was still, it was was still divided. They were some people it seemed like were getting stuff done, and some people that couldn’t get stuff done.
Crosby
Ok.
Roberson
It just, there was a conversation going on, but people were still snippy at each other.
Crosby
Well, that’s what happens when you try to force something in.
Roberson
Right. And it was, it was done like a hammer.
Crosby
Right.
Roberson
It wasn’t, “Hey, six months out, we’re gonna start kaizens and here’s some literature. Read up about it and learn a little bit about it.” It was, “Hey, next Monday, we’re gonna start kaizens. We’re gonna have a guy come and explain to you what it is, and then we’re gonna proceed with it.” And it was like, “Oh crap. What is this? Here’s another, you know, we’re gonna try to get more out of you. You’re not, you’re the reason everything’s failing.” You know, people had that kind of chip on their shoulder.
Crosby
Sure, sure, and understandably.
Roberson
And I will say this. I had a friend that worked in a paper mill. He’s retired now. He was a bearing specialist. He took little tools around him, stethoscopes and stuff. He was a millwright. A genius guy. And he would listen to bearings and he could tell you what was wrong with him and he’d put calipers on them and learn things. Just a neat guy. And they did a kaixen. And it really helped them in one of their departments. So I’m not saying that the system’s flawed. I’m saying it came into a flawed system and didn’t work.
Crosby
Yeah. And maybe got pushed as one more thing, you know, being pushed on the workforce, so…
Roberson
Right. Yeah. And that’s that’s what they felt like. “Oh, here comes something else.” You know, this is gonna be, one time they came out, and this was another petty thing. They come out and said, “You can’t take coffee out on the machine floor.” Well, that just made people stay in the break room more (Crosby laughs). I mean, you know, it was silly because nobody would take coffee up near the metal because it would stain it. Nobody would take water closer to the metal because it would water spot it. So they kept it in the cubbies around the machines. If you need a drink, you walk over and get it and go back to work. But it was just a bad call, you know.
Crosby
It was a solution being imposed by people who weren’t actually doing the work.
Roberson
Right, people that weren’t up all night and slept an hour the day before.
Crosby
Yeah, yeah.
Roberson
A cup of coffee is pretty important (laughs).
Crosby
No doubt, no doubt, and just being treated with respect is important and that probably felt like another example of not being treated with respect.
Roberson
Well, and you know something else that happened after y’all, after the workshops with y’all (laughs). And this, this has to do with coffee again (laughs). As you tell, I like coffee.
Crosby
Me too.
Roberson
You know, I find the older I get. It’s my drug of choice. Somebody was joking with me the other day, said, “You want a beer?” No, but I’ll take a cup of coffee if you got one and I’ll drink a beer, too. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a prude about it. So they they started having negotiations with the companies that were supplying the sodas, the candy machines, all that stuff. That was a pretty big contract in that plant. So somebody outside was getting that contract. Well, they were also selling coffee. And you’re supposed to put a donation in the box to keep the coffee coming. Well, Sean got on the negotiation thing with the hiring of the contractors that were bringing this stuff in and got talking to them and the guy said, “Hey, we make nothing on coffee anyway. They give it to us as part of a program to promote this this machine. Tell you what we’ll do. We got boxes of these machines. We’ll put a machine in every break room and we’ll just supply the coffee. Coffee won’t cost you anything. We’ll raise the price on our Cokes a dime or whatever it was, and we’ll make up for it there.” And everybody says, “Great.” You know, nobody needs to be drinking that many Cokes anyway (laughs). But nobody ever noticed it went up. Nobody cared. They got free coffee.
Crosby
That sounds like a good thing. Simple.
Roberson
It’s simple. And you know what? All took was asking. Nobody was even asking the vendor to do this.
Crosby
Nice.
Roberson
And the subject had been broached before that we should do this. It’s just little things like that and that led to big things being resolved. And, oh man, at one time we were just spitting metal out of that thing (laughs).
Crosby
Yeah, you got your processes running smooth because people started to…
Roberson
I remember coming to work at night. I worked straight nights for the last years I was in that plant because we needed a strong union guy on nights. And I preferred night because my daughter was in volleyball at the time in high school and I could sleep in the mornings and then get up about 5:00, go to her volleyball games before work and it was just better for me.
Crosby
Nice.
Roberson
Family wise, I spent more time with my family that way.
Roberson
And. I remember coming to work at night and there would be trucks back down that road that ran in front of the plant all the way to Hwy. 67 (laughs). Because we were loading them out just left and right and they’d be coming out the gate and I know they’d be backing in when I walked in. And I’d go relieve my guy. I’d always try to relieve him 15 to 20 minutes early, and once you’re relieved there, you can go. And most of them would go to go to the change house, change and buff up. Leave that way. But it made a difference in the production. It made a difference in the safety. It made a difference in the general cleanliness. It made a difference in the everyone’s attitudes.
Crosby
The quality of the product.
Roberson
The quality of the product. The maintenance. Everything. Everything got better because people bought into it and people were listened to. I remember in the cast house, they were having problems with this alloy, and one of the guys who was not a metal guy or anything. He was a guy that had a high school education. But he’d been making aluminum for 25 years.
Crosby
Mm-hmm.
Roberson
And he said, “Well, you know, I’ve told them that they need to add more whatever it was, magnesium or something. It was some additive you put into the aluminum. And he said, “If they do that, I think it’ll drop this other problem.” And I remember, the metallurgist saying, “You know that might work.” He said, “That might work. Let’s try it.” And it solved this huge problem they were having with this particular metal and fatigue.
Crosby
I think I remember that too. Maybe. I mean, it might have been somewhat related to the planning meeting we led.
Roberson
Yeah. It was because of you and your team that happened. Because before he might have looked at somebody else, and said, “Maybe just put some magnesium in that to solve that problem, but I ain’t telling them. They got a metallurgist up there.” I might be mispronouncing that, but “They got a guy that’s schooled to know what to mix in the metal and he’s telling us what to do. Let him do it.”
Crosby
Right. Right.
Roberson
That’s all well and good. But when you have a guy that’s trained in that who can admit to a guy who’s got a high school education, “Hey, he may know more about this particular issue than I do, I know what the bottom line says you’re supposed to do, but maybe that’s not working with the quality of materials we’re working with. You may be right. Let’s try it.”
Crosby
Yeah, that’s golden.
Roberson
And it’s gold, man. The atmosphere wasn’t poisoned. I didn’t get inundated with gripes when I walked in the door. I’m not saying everything was just hunky dory and perfect. But prior to us having those workshops and working through Tough Stuff and doing all the things it took to learn how to communicate to each other, prior to that, when I walked in that gate, there would be people waiting on me wanting me to file grievances (Crosby laughs). I mean, they would be waiting on me. And before I could, I had a thing I’d say, “Follow me to the break room. Let me get a cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette and we’ll talk.” And I I just had to get in that mode. And man, it would just fill up. Finally a foreman would walk in there and say, “Hey, guys. Y’all gonna run anything tonight?” It was just (laughs), it was a poisoned, poisoned atmosphere. And afterwards it was like, your walking in here and people were going, “Hey, man, what’s going on? You know, what are y’all running tonight? Well, we’re running this.” You know, nobody talked about that before. “Yeah, I found out if you let Rick raise that third roller up, it runs a little smoother. Oh yeah, I’ll try that tonight.” The communication between the workforce and the communication between the company people and the company people changed.
Crosby
That’s great, Pat.
Roberson
So it’s a huge thing. I think any … I wish the world, like I I’ve always said, I wish the world could go through Tough Stuff. I wish they could have that experience and who knows where we’d be. But I’m telling you it’s that important. It was that important in my life. It was that important to that facility. And I’m sure there’s other testimonials out there about this. Take your workshop and the book. I still have the book right here beside me in my bedroom, in my boudoir (laughs).
Crosby
Which book was that? Fight, Flight, Freeze?
Roberson
Tough Stuff.
Crosby
Oh, the manual for the Tough Stuff.
Roberson
I love that thing (laughs).
Crosby
Nice. Hey. This is great. I really appreciate this time. And this is just the kind of thing I’m hoping to have these conversations with others too. But you mentioned Don Simonic at one point last time we talked.
Roberson
Oh, I ended up loving that guy, man. He was, I’m not sure what position Don held in the. Company. What was he?
Crosby
Well, he used to be in charge of Warrick and Tennessee simultaneously and before that he worked with Dad at a plant called Addy, a magnesium plant. And they did the same kind of stuff. But down there, I think he was like just an advisor, to Pete.
Roberson
Yeah, he was. And that’s exactly what he did here. But I met him because I was the liaison between the union and the program if you remember. And he would meet with me just as much as he’d meet with Pete and he’d meet with us together. Talk to us. And he called me down one time and he said, “Hey, you wanna go have lunch? I’ll pay for it. That’s on me.” And I said, “Well, I’ll pay for my own” because that’s a union thing, you know (laughs). Don’t ever let anybody buy you lunch (laughs) or Coke. But we met and we talked and we laughed, and I said, you know, “I think it’s just the basic thing I’ve gotten out of it more than anything. It’s just the common basic common sense.” And he looked at me and he smiled, and he said “Common sense. Not many people have that anymore. Do they (laughs).” And I said, “No. I think we all have it, but it may be in a shell that hasn’t been penetrated. It doesn’t have the ability to get out.” He was such a great guy and he was kind of a mentor in that to me. I kind of looked up to him really. I looked up to him and the way he talked to me was even though we weren’t equals he talked to me as an equal. If that makes any sense.
Crosby
It makes sense. I mean, that’s…
Roberson
This guy was far beyond me in life, what I achieved, but he was a good grounded person and those kind of people I love. You know, if I see people that kind of crumble under pressure, it makes me nervous, you know? I get antsy about people like that. But when I see people kind of take a deep breath and give it thought, be thoughtful about what comes out of their mouth next, that means a lot to me. And I think that’s one of the things that I took from meeting you, and learning the process of communication in a way that has been proven to be successful. I learned two things. I learned not to attach emotion to everything. And I learned sometimes the answer is no, and that’s ok. You just go through the procedure and you work it and work it and work it and it will resolve. But you can’t just, you know, to a hammer, everything looks like nail. And that’s the way we were. We were just striking at everything. And then we found out, hey, if I just go up there and ask this question without venom in my breath, maybe I’ll get something done. And I did. And Sean did. Don did. It changed everything. It changed the way we talked to everybody. It changed the way we talk to people. Like I said, they wouldn’t want to bring anybody in out on the floor before. But they were eager to bring people out on the floor afterwards. Now, like I say, this didn’t happen like somebody turning on a light switch. You have to work it. You can’t just go, “Yeah, I heard what they said.” You gotta try it. You gotta work it.
Crosby
Yeah. It probably, you know, only took a few months really for…
Roberson
It didn’t! Really! This is the honest to God truth. It didn’t take a month before things started steamrolling moving ahead. Processes started going quicker. Little gripes for fixed instantly. I mean, not every little petty thing. Some things, you know, I’d just tell guys, “Hey, man, come on. You know, you really want me go down there with that?” (Laughs). And they’d go, “Oh yeah, maybe not. But if I could just get this, you know.”
Crosby
Even that was a change, though, not just going and fighting about everything.
Roberson
Oh man, it was huge. It was a huge difference. Like I said we didn’t file many grievances after that. We’d have a meeting with someone and like I said before, that was something never would have happened before, but now we had the ability to be heard. We had the ability to hear. And if you don’t have communication, it’s a house divided and that just doesn’t work. It never has worked and it never will work. It will never have its full potential, if people don’t learn how to communicate.
Crosby
Well, Pat, I just really appreciate you being willing to tell this story to the world.
Roberson
Well, there’s one other thing I want to say.
Crosby
OK, cool.
Roberson
I don’t know if it effects everyone this way or not. I know it effected Cotton this way and I know it affected me this way. This was life changing for me. It made me a happier person. Because it bled over into my family. I remember my sister said, “You sound like you’ve been brainwashed.” (We both laughed). I laughed and said, “You know, that’s funny you should say that cause Cotton said, ‘Now don’t go out there and start talking to your family and friends about this, like they already understand it, because they’re gonna think you’ve been brainwashed (laughs)’.” And we laughed about it. And my sisters are both educators and lovely women and they smiled and they said, “You sound like you’ve been brainwashed, but I like this Pat (laughs).” I’ve started, you know, kind of dialing it back. Because when you first come out of the program, or at least me, when I first came out of the workshop, I was like, “Oh man. I’ve been waiting to hear this and it’s such a simple thing and man, why couldn’t I have figured this out on my own?” You know, I really felt like, “God, this has just help me figure out so many things. And it did. It helped me in my community. It helped me in my volunteerism, in my community. It bled over into my everyday life and it made it better. And it will make everybody’s life better if they will, if they will just learn these few little tools it takes to fix problems that seem like you will never fix. Everything can be fixed.
Crosby
Well, you know, I think maybe that’s a great note to end on. And again, it was a pleasure working with you at Texarkana.
Roberson
Well, you too, Gil, and I would highly advise any company, of any size, that has the means, to have y’all come in and work with them, with the people in that company. And if it doesn’t, change you for the better, I’ll buy you a coke.
Crosby
(Laughs). Or how about a cup of coffee?
Roberson
Or a cup of coffee (laughs).
Crosby
That’s great. OK, well, I don’t know, man. I think that’s pretty much a rap. Anything else you want to tell the world?
Roberson
Well. Love your country. Love your fellow Americans. Let’s all work together and make it a better place.
Crosby
Love it. Those are wise words from a wise man.
Roberson
Have a wonderful day, Gil.
Crosby
OK. You too. And so I’m just going to say to the audience the same thing to the audience. Have a wonderful day. Thank you for listening and take care.
Roberson
Take care buddy.
Crosby & Associates Leadership and Organization Development Blog 