Word: foremen
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Probably the most democratic and hardest-working school in the U.S. is the one conducted in Detroit's old Le Baron Body plant by the Briggs Mfg. Co., which switched last year from automobile bodies to planes. In that efficient technical school Briggs executives, plant managers and foremen study side by side with green boy & girl apprentices, old auto workers, Negroes. Briggs executives have a stiffer course, must get 70% on their report cards or be flunked...
...over the ship that afternoon were Coast Guards, many of them raw recruits; 500 men of the prospective crew, unfamiliar with the ship, 1,750 employes of Robins, "of whom 50 were untrained men designated as 'fire watchers'"; 675 employes of subcontractors, all under various straw bosses, foremen, superintendents, officers. No one was in over-all command...
...Bottlenecks. As the program expanded, bottlenecks developed. One was in supervisory labor (foremen). One reason for slowdown rumors was the time lost because green men had to stand around waiting instruction. Many skilled workers had to be used as teachers. In actual operations one supervisor had to handle as many as 10 to 15 green hands...
Except for Government and agricultural workers, all Canadians fall under the wage-freezing order, get no raises for the duration. But they can and do get "promoted," and unless they are foremen, or earn more than $3,000 a year, they must also be given bonuses. Hence wages...
Albert Ramond and his colleagues changed all that. When hired for an efficiency survey, they now recommend that foremen and union leaders (or workers' representatives) be called in. Now it is rare for Bedaux Co. to go into unorganized plants. Says Albert Ramond: "We need the union's practical skill as well as our own scientific skill so that with management we may arrive at a tri-partite agreement." Bonuses now go 100% to the worker, and he understands the pay formula (which he didn't before...