Word: foremen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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From 150 factories in the Detroit area, 1,028 foremen and supervisors went to a new kind of accident-prevention school last week. Its theory: some men are more prone to industrial accidents than others, and the way to prevent plant accidents is to cull these...
Charles Bedaux in 1916 started efficiency engineering where famed Frederick Taylor and the Halsey systems left off. His engineers made their time & motion studies hiding behind pillars with stop watches. They frequently drew up recommendations without consulting even foremen, installed bonus systems which went 75% to the worker, 25% to supervisors as an incentive to push the men. Their standard "B unit," basis of pay, became hated by labor because it was increased as output rose, so that bonuses became harder & harder to earn while basic pay remained unchanged. Says Albert Ramond: ". . . We were far from blameless. We left...
Albert Ramond and his colleagues changed all that. When hired for an efficiency survey, they now recommend that foremen and union leaders (or workers' representatives) be called in. Now it is rare for Bedaux Co. to go into unorganized plants. Says Albert Ramond: "We need the union's practical skill as well as our own scientific skill so that with management we may arrive at a tri-partite agreement." Bonuses now go 100% to the worker, and he understands the pay formula (which he didn't before...
...step up their operations to Franklin Roosevelt's 168-hour week, they ran into the most discouraging shortage of all: skilled labor. A spotty reality for months, it became serious when key industries like machine tool manufacture tried to add a third and fourth shift. In many cases foremen, lead men and supervisors have had to work 70 hours a week to keep things going...
...public schools, thousands more were in training in factories, 10,000 more waited their turns. While Detroit's great auto factories retooled for tanks and planes, their workers studied plane welding, tank assembling, parachute making, etc. Lights in 30 Detroit schools blazed all night. Factories gave foremen leaves of absence to teach in the schools; some paid their workers full wages to go to school for more training...