Managing HUMANITY AND AUTOMATION

It is easy to discuss (in the cold terms of international economics) job losses and dislocations Icaused by the introduction into our mines and mills of cost-cutting technology. It is less easy to make the management decisions that cause such job losses. But none of that comes even close to the hurt suffered by the person whose job becomes redundant, whose skills become obsolete, and who may have to pack off, sometimes family and all, to an entirely different part of the country. It is the manager’s duty to do everything in his or her power to see that affected employees are given the ability to cope successfully with such changes. These are our people and they must be able to look to us for practical help in coping with the outcomes of our business decisions. I see it as our clear responsibility to establish systems that will permit displaced workers to prepare themselves for other kinds of jobs.

Now a common response to that last statement is “that’s government’s job.” I believe in self-reliance and self- help. I believe that we in industry must identify and define the needs and then proactively set about meeting those needs. We will use government facilities, but it has to be our initiative to define our needs and get this process started.

So let’s take a look at the likely needs: I have mentioned job loss. Because of computer innovations, automation, and the like, some kinds of jobs will simply cease to exist. Some already have. We must ensure that the people holding those jobs can acquire new job skills and the ability to seek out and take new jobs. In a word — training.

More sophisticated equipment requires more sophisticated operating skills. The maintenance of more sophisticated equipment requires higher levels of maintenance skills. Certainly the skills content of many jobs in our industry is already being substantially upgraded, and again it comes down to training.

I am using that word “training” in a special way. I am proposing an integrated, industry-wide system of training modules that will provide for the full perspective of employee needs — not just equipment-specific training, not just trade-specific training, but a broader approach within which the employee can fill in any gaps in education or work experience to become more self-reliant in any labor market.

Equipment-specific training will no longer be sufficient by itself. Think of what is involved in bringing fairly sophisticated training to people who are so long out of school that their learning skills may be rusty. (I, for example, have yet to succeed in getting my video cassette recorder to record television programs during my absence.) Indeed, what academic educational base is needed in order to assimilate training in, say, the maintenance of computer-based flotation control systems? Before we train, do we have to re-educate, and if so, how do we achieve this?

I see the whole education and training scene as one integrated system — a pyramid of learning. Along the broad base of this pyramid are basic programs such as learning skills, reading skills, and mathematical skills. In the middle part of the pyramid are general programs designed for operators as well as for the maintenance trades in subject areas such as hydraulics, electronics, internal combustion, and so on. The training will get more advanced and specialized near the top of the pyramid. When you get to the apex, you see training at an advanced technical level or in an equipment- specific mode.

The key concept is that employees can enter this learning pyramid at whichever point is appropriate to them, move through it in the direction that best matches their aptitude, and exit it with readily understood qualifications wherever it has best prepared them for ongoing employment.

The object is to give the employee mobility in the fullest sense of the word, in fact to address three mobilities. First, upward mobility in the job hierarchy of his or her present workplace. Second, lateral mobility into a similar kind of job with another mining company. And third, outward mobility to be able to take his or her skills to another industry altogether.

Can we build this learning pyramid? Of course we can. It’s exactly the kind of challenge that brings out the best in concerned employers and concerned government. Furthermore, we have a lot of the required pieces already in place.

In industry we have an increasing range of modular training courses, mainly equipment-specific or job- specific in nature. The modular approach is important as it facilitates matching an individual’s experience and capability against job content on an industry-wide basis, thus improving the employee’s lateral mobility.

Employers long ago accepted the costs of such training as one of the basic costs of production, because it advances employees through the job hierarchy at the employer’s own operation — upward mobility. Further development of the modular approach will improve lateral mobility at almost no extra cost.

A current weakness of industry’s training is that little provision is made for people entering the training courses with quite diverse backgrounds and educational levels. The pyramid approach would help remedy this. Various government programs are already in place that employers can draw upon to finance a good part of the cost of introducing a broader syllabus of training. Here is an area where an industry initiative in re- defining its needs can be matched by available government assistance.

I believe government has much more to offer. We need only take the initiative and ask for help in the context of a well-thought-out proactive plan. There are a lot of educational bricks and mortar left over from the baby-boom Sixties and Seventies. There are plenty of skilled teachers left with a diminished enrolment.

Computer-aided instruction can reach out to remote mines and offer people there the near equivalent of the learning resources we have available in the less-remote centres.

Building such a computer-based educational network will not be cheap, but is it not precisely the kind of activity that our governments should support and engage in? What more tangible way could there be to minimize the regional disparities across our country than that of affording all Canadians, regardless of the remoteness of their location, equality of educational opportunities?

Let’s take a final look at my pyramid. Its apex, the equipment and site- specific training, continues to be an industry responsibility and cost — but on an increasingly modular basis. Below that, trades and other general training are provided by industry and government collaboration, largely at government expense. Below that again, the basic or remedial general education programs are, as they have always been, government’s responsibility. But all is integrated.

Industry’s responsibility is to design this pyramid by defining its training and educational needs and to sell its concept to government; government’s responsibility is to glue together the pyramid on a national basis by building a network that will serve all of our people, regardless of their location.

Just as the role of the Mining Industry Technology Council of Canada (mitec) is to set the priorities of the mining industry’s research and development needs and then lead governments into a co-operative R&D effort aimed directly at meeting those needs, so also can we define our industry’s learning needs and attack them co-operatively with government.

At the personal level, as each of us contemplates the new methods and technologies we can bring to our work, let’s make sure we honor our responsibilities to those whose livelihoods we are going to affect.

At the industry level, let’s take an initiative like that of mitec: define the needs of our people before those needs arise and then persuade governments to work with us in an integrated collaborative way that will best serve the needs of our people.

Together we can prove there is such a thing as pyramid power. P. C. MacCulloch is the president and chief operating officer of Hope
Brook Gold. This article was adapted from a speech he gave at the Second Canadian Symposium on Mining Automation, held recently in Sudbury. William Stanley returns to this column next month.