Word: big
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Almost from the start, the U.S. industry was scarred by a series of violent, bloody strikes. Labor did not succeed in organizing the industry until 1937, when the door was opened by U.S. Steel. President Roosevelt persuaded the late Myron C. Taylor, then Big Steel's board chairman (and later Roosevelt's personal representative to the Vatican) to make a contract with the United Steelworkers, the first in the industry...
Under Ben Fairless, Big Steel underwent its biggest expansion-and a growing friendliness with the unions. After Roger Blough went to U.S. Steel in 1942 from the Manhattan law firm of White & Case, he became experienced in labor negotiations. But he was a different sort of man from Fairless, and his attitude toward the union gradually stiffened in the face of its growing demands. He was hardly more than a year in the chairman's chair when the union in 1956 won its biggest wage victory. Blough has never forgotten that defeat. Says he blandly: "We would like...
Dutch Stubbornness. Blough runs Big Steel with the quiet confidence and sure hand of a man who thoroughly knows his job. He is a prodigious worker who still puts in twelve hours a day at the job of keeping tabs on every aspect of his business. He gets up at 5 or 6 a.m., jots down ideas and reads newspapers and magazines before arriving at the office around 8. He has half a day's work done before most of his executives come in, sometimes embarrasses them by assuming that everyone keeps his hours and calling their offices before...
Blough guided Big Steel through a major reorganization to keep it up with the times. He transformed the corporation from a sprawling holding company with dozens of subsidiary corporations into an integrated corporate unit, spun off businesses, e.g., shipping, that did not fit into the company's basic pattern. To get Big Steel on a lean, efficient basis, he vigorously pushed a standard-cost system for evaluating every job in the company. He increased the company's incentive system until it now covers 75% of all employees. (Blough, whose salary is $265,000 a year, also picked...
...Though Japan is still considered a high-cost producer of iron and steel-mainly because it has to import raw materials-it also manages to compete actively abroad, is moving into South America at the expense of the U.S. industry. Japan's steel industry is dominated by six big firms led by Yawata Iron & Steel, under President Arakazu Ojima, who wants the industry to curb its headlong overexpansion, work at more economy...