QUESTIONS:

1) What is the relationship between line foreman at Treadway’s Lima Plant and other groups within the plant : General supervisors and areas managers, top management, the union, hourly workers, each other?

Treadway Tire Company is one of the largest producers of tires. The Lima plant located at Lima in Ohio had 1,120 employees. 970 of them were hourly employees and 150 were salaried employees. They work in 12-hour shifts.

Line foremen are salaried floor level managers who supervise hourly employees.

970 hourly workers were supervised by 50 line foremen. Line foremen didn’t have good relationship with hourly workers. They expressed concerns about their lack of authority and adversarial relations with the hourly workers. Several incidents highlighted tension between hourly workers and line foremen.

Line foremen were supervised by 13 general supervisors. Line foremen are endowed with lot of responsibilities. General supervisors abused and threatened the line foremen with poor performance review if they are unable to meet the forecasted performance. This indicates poor relationship between them.

The responsibilities of the line foremen include documenting the employee disciplinary actions and negotiating the work standards with union reps. The union reps on grievance committee sometimes provides cleared record the hourly employee without providing any explanations to the line foremen. There isn’t much co-ordination between the line foremen team and union reps.

Hourly workers don’t listen to them and the top level management will not respond to their requests for tools and training. General supervisors and area managers always pressurize them about meeting the forecasted performance or goals. Line foremen are isolated and don’t have good relations with other groups within the plant.