Word: blough
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...Blough, hired by White & Case, got his first big chance when the New Deal's Temporary National Economic Committee launched a congressional study, which was a veiled attack on Big Business. Blough was put in charge of a task force of 20 lawyers to make Big Steel's case, did so well that, at 38, he was named general solicitor for U.S. Steel itself...
...Blough streamlined the legal department, went on to important roles in labor negotiations, financing, a hundred other tasks. Within ten years he had scrambled through the corporate hierarchy so fast that when Ben Fairless shifted over from president to chairman in 1952, a special post of vice chairman was created for Blough and he became, in Fairless' words, "my right bower." Three years later, when Fairless retired, it was a foregone conclusion that Blough would be the new boss...
...savings plan, whereby the company matches every dollar saved by its nonunion employees (the union turned down the plan) with 50? of its own, and he broadened the incentive program, which now covers 75% of all employees either through cash awards for production ideas or through stock options. Blough, who himself picked up most of his 19,302 shares of U.S. Steel stock (worth $1,800,000) through options, considers the incentive program "one of the great factors in the progress of the corporation." He points proudly to the fact that U.S. Steel's first-quarter profit...
...Blough found time to lay out his business philosophy in three lengthy lectures delivered recently at Columbia University. He feels that it is time to "raise the question as to whether the original purpose so many sincere people had in fostering the cause of unions has somehow gotten out of hand. The glacierlike forces of a powerful labor movement, including unions representing workers in hundreds of competitive groups, adopt objectives that largely contradict the competitive principle itself." They also imperil profits, the chief means to improve production. "All consumers benefit from improved tools of production, which profits must...
...BLOUGH argues that the dollars corporations earn as profits have remained virtually stable for ten years, while wages have more than doubled throughout U.S. industry. In steel alone, employment costs have jumped at the compound rate of 7.9% each year since 1940. The industry still made a profit of 6.3% on its sales last year (an even better 8.7% for U.S. Steel), but Blough argues that profits still fall far short of the cash needed for expansion. U.S. Steel alone had to borrow $600 million in the last five years. As for inflation, Blough considers congressional suggestions of wage...