Word: norrises
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The speaker is William Norris, a Nebraska farmer's son who learned about computers when he was a World War II Navy cryptographer (he helped to break the German code), then sold stock at $1 a share to start Control Data in Minneapolis in 1957. Last year the company...
So far, 1 ,000 people- mostly unskilled and black- have found work in plants that Control Data has opened in the ghettos of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Washington, D.C. The number will rise to 1 ,400 next January when Norris opens a fourth plant in a renewal area of St...
When Control Data built its first inner-city plant in Minneapolis in 1968. Norris laid down three rules: "Make the plant new and modern. Make it profitable. Make us dependent on it, so that we will have to make it work." The plant accordingly was designed to build intricate components...
Norris also sought out local black leaders and followed their street-smart advice: Build a day care center for working mothers. Offer to put them on flexible hours, say, 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., or 1 to 5 p.m. Don't ask if the applicant has been arrested...
At first, absenteeism and quitting were problems. But Norris and his executives held on, training, prodding, sometimes bailing workers out of jail after long weekends. Today, the average worker in the first plant has held his job for five years, building skills and climbing up. The story is much the...