LESTER THUROW
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with American workers, but American management cannot? The
japanese have had thirty years of 7.5 percent annual gains of
productivity. We have never had one such year in our entire history.
We would have a productivity problem vis-a-vis the japanese even if
our rate had not gone down.
Think about a japanese worker and an American worker, faced
with a new labor-saving machine. The japanese worker comes
armed with a lifetime job, a wage rate that attaches to him as a
person , and no matter what he does , he'll make exactly the same
amount of money, and a bonus, based on productivity and profits. A
new machine cannot hurt that worker. All it can do is raise his
bonus. Think of an American worker facing the same machine. He
may become unemployed, his job skills may become obsolete, he has
every rational reason to resist that technical change. Think about the
thing that the japanese are famous for: individual workers doing
small things to raise the rate of productivity. For most workers the
only place to raise productivity is on their own job.
If
an American
worker thought of a way to make his own job more productive, he
would cause people to be laid off. In addition, his coworkers would
be afraid of him because they don 't want him generating another
good idea causing
them
to be laid off.
DANIEL BELL: I think you are presenting too rosy a picture of the
japanese. The japanese also have a large contracting out system.
And those workers are really sweated and squeezed.
LESTER THUROW: Oh, absolutely. But the fact is that the japanese have
a primary work force that 's desperately interested in productivity. No
American work force is interes ted in productivity. And if a japanese
company gets into real trouble, all the women quit "voluntarily."
So, they have groups they push-no question about that-but they
have a large group in the society interested in pushing up productiv–
ity, because they have a set of microincentives congruent with their
social goals. In the United States we have a set of microincentives
that are antithetical to the social goals.
ROBERT NOZICK: There could be incentives within a company-it
would not be hard for companies to offer workers incentives .
LESTER THUROW: That's what the japanese do in their San Diego
plant.
ALVIN KIBEL: They can't give them a lifetime job.
LESTER THUROW: Yes, they do.
The other japanese critique of American business management
is that American management has let its time horizons get too short.
At the
Fortune
meeting, the japan ese said, "Look, you guys have a
