Word: peaches
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...twelve a day, mostly invented." The issue that finally triggered the strike was a management proposal to equalize the piecework pay system. Under the old system, wages for comparable work could vary by as much as 20% from department to department. "What they were trying to do," as Peach saw it, "was take money out of the higher-paid workers' pockets and give it to the lower-paid workers. In two years' time everybody would be together at the bottom. It became a real battle of undermining the union...
...That has nothing to do with us," says Peach. "More bloody fools them." "We have two men who are prepared to drive it," says the manager. "That's fine," says Peach, "as long as we get the pay right. In the meantime, that machine will stay in that corner...
Even more objectionable than the proposed wage reform was the industrial-relations expert who was selected to negotiate it−Fred Straw. Peach describes Straw as "a hatchet man," and even John Owen concedes that he was a rather aloof, overbearing man who gave the unions the false impression that "shock troops of management were coming in to sort things...
...Doug Peach. He thinks that Rubery Owen employees might be more interested in producing if they were not trapped among the depressing relics of wartime plant and machinery. Says Peach: "I was sure that I would have liked to have been a loser in the last war when I went to Volkswagen for four days in Germany and saw the batteries of machinery the U.S. had given them.* I could look along and see presses as far as I could see at Volkswagen; and when I look at Rubery Owen, I think if there is anything that didn...
...John Owen and his brother David, 38, who directs all the Rubery Owen operations outside of Darlaston, took control of the company. Shortly after that, "Mr. John and Mr. David," as Doug Peach refers to them, commissioned a behavioral study from an industrial-consulting firm. The consultants concluded that the company seemed more involved in labor relations than in producing