Egg on your Face : Pablo Muñoz Gregorio Billikopf Encina This article is important as it documents the first known time where workers under a piece-rate system were paid to actually take a break. Some key issues regarding quality are discussed. For a more complete paper on piece rate pay and quality factors, see Piece Rate Pay Design. We were about to start our
2007 apple harvest this year and were considering some important changes. Among
them, was to move from an hourly based pay to a piece rate approach. Our
biggest worry was maintaining quality.
Quality Each picker would work two
rows at a time. We had observed that they often banged their ladders against
the apples when moving them from one side of the tree to another, so we
provided three ladders per picker: one for the middle row, and one each for the
outside rows. A base quality standard was
established for all picked fruit. This first year we kept it to a simple “pass
or no pass.” Next year we may also incorporate a quality bonus. Our management team decided
to use an object lesson to illustrate the importance of quality. The general
idea came from Chris Peereborn, our field consultant,
although we came up with the details. We bought enough raw eggs to fill half a
bin.
Equipment operators. “I will have to be very
careful.” “I will choose the roads that are in the best condition to drive to
the shed.” “It will take me twice as long to drive to the shed.” “I will pile
no more than two bins on top of each other with the fork lift, and do so much
slower.” The fork lift driver at the
cold storage did not have the benefit of seeing the contents of the bin ahead
of time. He began to handle the bin quite roughly and got quite upset when he
noticed the broken eggs. “You could have told me the bin had eggs!” he
complained. At the end of the day, our object lesson was clear. If you do not
want egg on your face, handle the apples as if they were raw eggs.
We introduced a straight
piece rate (so a worker picking twice as many bins would earn twice the money).
We provided cold water and toilets that were close by. We also gave each worker
two pairs of gloves.
When workers are paid by the
hour it is the farm enterprise that pays for the break. When paid by the piece,
it is the workers who pay for it. For this reason, most workers resent being
made to stop and take their break when paid by the piece. So we insisted that
our workers take their full morning and afternoon breaks but we paid for these.
That is, we calculated the
amount of work each crew worker was performing per minute, and paid them for
their break as if they were working without stopping. Another way of saying
this to the workers was, “Come and take a break and pretend you were still out
there working, because we will pay you for the break time as if you were indeed
working.” It took us three days before
they relaxed a little and began taking the breaks without a major struggle.
They had trouble believing us at first and were delighted when they were able
to see that we did indeed follow up with this payment.
We finished our harvest and
are pleased. We reduced the number of apple injuries during harvest. Workers were
able to pick twice as fast as last year on the average. The fastest worker
picked four times more than the slowest. We did not retain the slowest workers,
so the ratio was reduced to 1:2.6 by the end of the harvest. It is true that
our trees were loaded this year and we harvested double than last year, making
it easier for the crew workers. But even so, we reduced the man-days-person
from 1,200 to 800. For more information on designing an effective
piece-rate or bonus system, go to tinyurl.com/99cq
or contact Billikopf at gebillikopf@ucdavis.edu
or (209) 525-6800. © 2007 by The Regents of the
University of California and Gregorio Billikopf |
28 November 2007