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Chemical manufacturer relies on Fink, Inc. for labor/management solutions; community outreach
When PCS Purified Phosphates’ Plant Manager Dan Having thinks back to 1994, he remembers it as an era of turmoil. Years of flawed labor relations fostered deep distrust between the Fernald, Ohio company’s management team and its union labor force, negatively affecting quality, production, sales, and profits.
“It was clear that we needed to find a way to work together,” recalls Having.
Guidance was solicited from Chuck Fink, owner of Fink, Inc., a Cincinnati-based corporate training firm. At that time, Fink, Inc. already had several years of exposure in working with the employees at the Cincinnati plant.
“Because we had worked with Chuck before, we knew he wouldn’t present a canned consulting program,” says Having. “He has an uncanny ability to adapt to the situation at hand, facilitating what were some extremely heated meetings between labor and management, which ended up being very fruitful.”
Fink designed, developed, and facilitated an environment for open discussion between union and management representatives—what the company calls the Joint Steering Team (JST). Directed by Fink, the group agreed on a set of Guiding Moral Principals for working together.
“The JST worked hard to change attitudes and outcomes at the plant,” explains Fink. “We all worked together to design a system for making process changes and capital improvement decisions.”
The exercise proved so effective that in 2000 management and labor wrote and approved a new contract without attorneys. “Clearly, Chuck is a very effective third party facilitator who gained the trust and respect of both sides,” says Having.
Additionally, Having has noticed other improvements since labor and management started working together:
- The plant’s lost time injury rate has dropped from one to two per year, to a span of zero incidents during a five year period.
- Formal labor grievances declined to a fraction of the amount experienced in past years.
- Quality incidents, which had occurred at a rate in excess of 30 per year, improved dramatically. This was a significant difference for a plant that at the time was shipping between 50 and a 100 million pounds of product annually.
- Finally, Having noticed a definite improvement in providing for the customer, which correlated to a stronger sales relationship.
“Overall, the efficiency and productivity of the plant significantly increased, and I attribute that to Chuck’s efforts in getting everyone working together,” continues Having. “People took ownership and contributed towards improving the overall plant performance.”
Community Outreach: Building a Bridge of Communication
With the company’s labor culture improving, the attention shifted to building a better relationship with the local community.
PCS Purified Phosphates is located in a very environmentally sensitive area that has received extensive negative press. Although Having’s facility had negligible influence on these issues, he wanted to ensure the company’s openness in communicating with the local residents. So he and his counterpart at a neighboring chemical plant started a Community Advisory Panel (CAP) to address residents’ concerns.
“In working with the community, we needed someone who could be a fair and impartial third party facilitator,” says Having. “The first person I thought of was Chuck.”
Meeting monthly since 2000, the CAP team consists of company employees, local residents, an elementary school principal, a farmer, a firefighter, a high school student, a senior citizen, and several other representatives. Fink facilitates the meetings.
“Chuck has an ability to adjust to each individual, and the sense of fairness that he brings to the table is very reassuring to the people on the CAP,” explains Having. “They know they can trust him to fairly protect all of the opinions of the CAP members.”
“No one benefits from sustained hostilities,” says Fink. “In both these cases, we helped the groups align their different needs and objectives to find a common purpose. Direct, honest communication is critical to achieving what was once thought to be impossible.”
For more information about Chuck Fink and Fink, Inc., please call (513) 324-6279, or fill out the contact form.
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