Word: kalmar
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...rate of 1.5%, even if employers must pay workers who show up only sporadically. Volvo has pioneered new ideas to keep workers interested, including a novel assembly line that allows employees to set their own pace (TIME, Sept. 16, 1974). That has cut absenteeism in a new plant outside Kalmar to 15%-still high by almost any standards outside Sweden. Even shutting down is no answer; on each of the days that its plants will be idle in early 1977, Volvo will have to give workers 85% of their normal pay, and unions are clamoring...
Many Skeptics. A steady stream of auto executives, from Henry Ford II to Fiat Managing Director Umberto Agnelli, has visited the Kalmar plant...
Most U.S. auto executives insist that the Kalmar system would not work in American assembly plants, which serve a vastly larger market and so must turn out many more cars per day than Kalmar...
Some workers and union leaders consider the Kalmar plant less than Valhalla. "The environment is better," says Göran Nillson, 38, who worked on Volvo's conventional assembly line near Göteborg, "but you should not forget that we have the same productivity objectives as any other plant. It looks like a paradise, but we work hard." Adds Kjell Anderson, an official of the militant Swedish metal workers' union, "They haven't really changed the system and they haven't changed the hierarchy. For example, we don't think it's necessary...
Gyllenhammar remains convinced that Kalmar will work. "We think the extra capital involved will be offset by increased productivity," he says. Still, Gyllenhammar is a prudent manager, and Volvo is prepared to adapt if the Kalmar experiment fails. The plant was designed in such a way that it can be re-converted into a conventional assembly line at a minimal cost...