CLASSICS IN AUSTRALIAN MANAGEMENT
HOW THE MAIL EXCHANGE BECAME A MONSTER
A case study from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, January 16, 1982 by Paul Byrnes
Someone should write a book about what happened at the Redfern Mail Exchange. It should be compulsory reading for all senior bureaucrats, business people and union leaders so that it can never happen again. No one person is to blame. It is more a matter of collective responsibility: the management that conceived it, the engineers that designed it, the parliament that allowed it, the unions that fought it.
Redfern was the battleground for 14 years of industrial warfare in the postal system, from 1965 to 1979, when the last great battle was fought over whether "The Redfern Mangler", "The Monster of Cleveland Street", would survive. The Australian Postal and Telecommunications Union (APTU), the biggest and strongest union in the postal service, lost that dispute and the "industrial dinosaur" was beheaded.
Redfern was a product of its time. It was conceived in the late 1940s, during post-war reconstruction. A centralised mail sorting system was the way of the future, machines were going to replace man and Australian was going to be in the forefront of world mail-handling technology. It was a truly "brave, new world" concept. In May, 1958, the retiring director of Posts and Telegraph, Sir Giles Chippendall, predicted colour television and video-telephones, delivery of mail by rockets and helicopters and machine processes for all mail handling. Given the advances in telecommunications, which had been considerable, it was assumed that mail handling would follow the same pattern of automation. A special correspondent had this to say on the matter:
"Being an industrial process, the sorting of mail matter for a large city population lends itself to mechanised and automatic techniques in which centralisation improves efficiency" (The Sydney Morning Herald, June, 1960).
It was thought that the introduction of certain work methods would eliminate the arbitrary and often uncontrollable job practices that proliferated in the exchange. The elimination of human labour and disciplining of the remaining workforce seemed essential for improving work practices and control. By the end of 1958, the plans for Redfern Mail Exchange were already before Federal Parliament. The fact that it was called an exchange indicated the dominance of the telecommunication side in the engineering section of the Post Master General's Department.
Redfern was a monolithic one hectare and 7.430 square metres of floor space and that was part of the attraction. But Australia was not alone. Mail technology throughout the world was moving towards automation. There is a Redfern-type building with similar problems in Canada.
However, the foundation stone was laid in November 1962. The building was completed in 1965 and began operating in late 1966. It was meant to operate until at least 1985.
In terms of design, the Redfern Mail Exchange alienated workers from the mail, their traditional responsibilities and work practices and from their bosses. The rifts began almost immediately and militancy grew year-by-year. It became a colossal power struggle between the unions and Australia Post over who was controlling whom. When something went wrong, the whole system stopped because 90 percent of the State's mail went through Redfern. While the two bureaucracies (union and management) screamed at each other, the public and media screamed at them and the mail piled up in "the monster".
Before Redfern, the mail system was spread throughout several centres in Sydney. In each centre, the workers knew one another and the work was finite. A bag arrived, it was sorted by hand and it went out again. That was the way mail had always been sorted. The pace of work and the order in which it was completed, was very much left to the discretion of the shopfloor. Each section had different work practices and there was an "old-fashioned pride" in the service of mail. The environment was quiet and you knew your boss. Not that it was idyllic. Many of the facilities were old and cramped and a lot of work was back-breakingly manual.
In Redfern, it was assumed the staff would like the new system because it did away with much of the manual work. In fact, it did away with much of the manual sorting which was the mail officers' main skill but much of the heavy work remained. Redfern was a mail factory in the worst sense; a place where machines controlled men. Some of the equipment could not even be turned off by its operator. Breakdowns were to be fixed by the maintenance staff only. In theory, each person was allocated a single task and had to stick to this. The mail was trucked into the docks and unloaded by hand on to two "twin bands", conveyors which carried the bags to the mail opening area on the fourth floor. From there it was separated into channels. Letters went this way, parcels went that, interstate and country over there. No single section was all on one floor because tasks had been broken up and recombined into a production line system. The system became known as the "Redfern Waterfall", because the mail flowed down through the building in a never-ending stream. A mail officer could come on duty to a huge pile of work and work all day but not see any decrease in the volume of mail nor see an operation completed.
The letter plant installed in Redfern was an Australian design and for the first year there were problems. The problems included an American machine which would clog sometimes and shred letters, hence the name "The Mangler", or "The Masticator". Though the number of letters destroyed was small the machine became famous as a symbol of Redfern.
In the Letter Plant most sorting was automatic. Letters fed into coding machines with an operator sitting in front of the machine punched the postcode number … the letter whizzed away to the floor below where a decoding machine read the markings and spat the letter out into the correct stack. The coding machines were completely new to mail sorting and completely alienating. They were arranged in long rows together and were originally enclosed by a wall, "The Berlin Wall", as it became known. It kept the manual mail sorters (the old) separate from the coders (the new) and access to the coding area was supposed to be restricted and strict schedules were maintained for output. It was hoped that the performance of coders would set industry standards for efficiency measures and pay scales. Soon after the Letter Plant began operations in 1966, there was a major dispute over who was to operate the coding machines and whether they would get more pay. The union lost and the coders ended up getting less but the wall eventually was demolished. To add to the problems, noise levels were high, the floors were hard on feet and surveillance was done by cameras.
The major design fault was its vulnerability. If one part of the system broke down, it could stop the whole building. The mail had to be kept moving at all costs, to avoid clogging. This vulnerability was the key with which the union tried to unlock the power of management. Apparently, when the twin bands broke down, management would panic and pull everybody off their normal job and put them on to opening bags (to keep the opening area clear). Workers resented being shovelled around by management. "Trespassing" by tradition, was against the rules. In pre-Redfern days, a mail sorter worked in one area and stayed there.
Moreover, the sheer numbers at Redfern were a problem. The legend and there are many, says that at some time every race on earth was represented there, including one Eskimo. There were 16 different Middle-Eastern groupings, divided on traditional lines and many different religions. It was said that management was predominantly Masonic with Catholics not able to get promotion until five or six years ago. Within this climate, militancy grew as Redfern grew. By 1970, there had been several major disputes and alienation was complete. Disputes became chronic. By the late sixties, the mail officer did not regard himself so much as a servant as a trade unionist. There were younger people coming in with a different attitude to authority. The management attitude was to resolve problems by resorting to the rule book or attempting to eliminate those in the workforce who offered resistance. Rumours persisted of attempts at workplace counselling using ladies from “A Touch of Class.” Car tyres were slashed and certain wheel nuts loosened. Claims could not be verified that contracts had been taken out on a number of managers and union officials but people did go missing never to be seen again.
Most of the managers had never worked on the floor and often lacked a clear idea of what was involved in the design of the exchange.
Any disputes, bans or meetings, were seen by management as direct challenges to their authority. The staff were no longer willing to accept a management attitude of "I have made my decision and that is final" over something they saw as important. Communication was also poor within the union. Disputes were not settled except at the top level. The division between worker and management was complete.
Your task:
What are the key issues for management and leadership?
Come to a well argued conclusion as to what might be done to save the situation at Redfern.
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