Word: automen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...works are the biggest batch of changes in a decade: new bodies, airconditioning, power steering, power brakes and engines so peppy that every driver can feel like a hot-rodder. By hiring women and bringing back pensioned employees (as the United Auto Workers asked Ford to do last week), automen think they can meet their arms schedules and still turn out 5,000,000 cars in 1953, about the same number as this year...
...reason for the changes is that automen expect to have a hard time selling all the cars they can make. They expect that dealers will have to boost trade-in allowances; by midsummer there may even be some price cuts...
There were signs last week that automen may do even better. Automakers, who had been among the hardest hit by the cutbacks, last week found that many types of steel had suddenly become abundant. Although they had originally been promised only enough metals to turn out 800,000 cars in the second quarter, it now looked as if they would meet their "permissible" DPA quota of 930,000 cars and trucks...
...some strange partners. The C.I.O. Autoworkers' Boss Walter Reuther and other auto-union leaders sat with General Motors' President Charles E. (for Erwin) Wilson, Michigan's Governor Mennen Williams and top auto executives. Across the table sat mobilization Directors Charles Edward Wilson and Manly Fleischmann. The automen, union officials and governor had teamed up to protest cutbacks in auto production...
...soon. Word got out that he plans to cut auto output from 1,000,000 cars in the first quarter of 1952 to 800,000 cars in the second. Furthermore, Fleischmann would give automakers only enough copper for 640,000 cars. If the new slash goes through, said the automen, unemployment in the industry would double. Said G.M.'s "Engine Charlie" Wilson: "It would amount to a political, economic and social crime...