Heading into the late 90’s, I returned to Magna. Only this time around, I worked for them in
Europe.
Magna had just acquired a few European plants, mostly
located in Germany, Austria, Belgium and England. It was a quiet undertaking and most
acquisitions were integrated into their existing North American groups. They basically mimicked their North America
way in Europe.
Initially, doing things the North American way was quite a
challenge. Changing a culture is always
complex and very sensitive.
The European plants were unionized. In fact, they had multiple unions under one
roof. Both blue and white collars had
their own unions, with multiple types of unions available to them.
One can always argue whether a union is beneficial and to
whom. One can even say unions are a
handicap to management; however, if you play your cards right, a union can be
your greatest asset. For those that have never worked in Europe, I’d like to add
that company officials meet with senior union reps monthly to review their
monthly financial statements. This is
not done in North America. In my
opinion, it should be done, as it allows the union to better understand the
company’s position and avoids the risk of being driven down to the ground by
the union.
What a surprise it was for me when I was asked to relocate
to Belgium.
The plant was situated in
Braine L’Alleud (close to
Waterloo, where
Napolean lost the
Battle of Waterloo) and it felt
like I had just done a full circle in my career, as this is where I was working
when Magna approached me to work for them in Canada.
(At that time the plant was owned by a German
company and was called Happich SA).
What
a coincidence that Magna had just acquired this plant!
The Braine L’Alleud plant was losing money, had quality
issue and was unable to supply customers on time. Jan Boeckx was the General Manager and he was
an amazing union negotiator that always relied on me to play the role of
devil’s advocate.
I even got nicknamed the Canadian Cowboy by the plant
employees. Many of the people I worked
with earlier in my career were still there and told me that I had Americanized
myself too much over the 14 years I was gone from Belgium.
Within one year, we turned the plant around. We broke even in 1998 and made a good profit
in 1999. Not bad for the North American
way; however, this would never have been achievable without the amicable
relation we had with our union.
We worked together as a team. Our main goal was customer satisfaction,
shareholder satisfaction and employee satisfaction, resulting in job security.
While it’s been several years, there are some names that
have remained in my memories. I’d like
to thank these people for enabling me to accomplish the mandate that was set by
head office. Thank you to:
·
Daniel Zonka (Production Manager)
·
Claude Schuler (Continuous Improvement, Tooling
Engineering)
·
Ludovic Seydoux (Product & Process
Development & Industrialization)
·
Ralf Rimkus (Expanding Seals, Product Tooling
& Production)
·
Danielle Imbert (Human Resources Manager)
·
Pascal Trimmer (Sales & Marketing)
·
Cecile Schuler (Sales & Marketing)
For those that I’ve forgotten by name or whose name I have
misspelled, please understand it’s been many years.
In addition, I’d like to thank Jan’s wife Laurence for
writing some amazing speeches for Jan.
Those were definitely memorable!
