Word: forde
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Reds & Reuther. The biggest Ford local, Detroit's No. 600, has yet to count its votes. U.A.W. Vice President Richard T. Leonard, who had bargained for the plan, still had a faint hope that the votes of its 62,000 members would save pensions...
...henchmen, according to union gossip, quietly urged the plan's defeat. In this, they found themselves working with their arch enemies, the Communists. As long as they thought that Young Henry would not agree to pension, the Communists (who dominate Local 600) were for them. When Ford agreed to them, they turned against the whole business...
Both they and the Reutherites argued that the plan was inadequate; the Ford company could discontinue it in two years if it wished, though anyone pensioned in that time would continue to get his pension for life. (The Ford company said the two-year limit was set only so that it could make any changes found necessary after the plan was operating. It had no intention of dropping it in the future...
Debt & Illness. Coupled with union politics was the human tendency to take the cash and let the credit go. As 34,782 of Ford's 110,000 workers are under 40, they would have another 25 years to go before they were eligible for pensions. Many of them felt sure that, before then, they would have better jobs or be their own bosses...
Said George Martin, a wiry veteran of some 25 years at Ford: "I felt the same way when I first started here. But here I am. The young fellows think they'll go on to better things. But things like debt and family illness can stick you like it did me. Twenty years from now, most of them will still be here and wishing they had the pension...