Word: runcorn
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...says Lillian Gallagher, 41, a British housewife who earns $50 a week as a packer at the Japanese-owned Y.K.K. zipper plant in Runcorn, 18 miles from Liverpool. Hers is a rare testimonial in Britain, where labor and management often seem less interested in pulling their weight than tearing each other apart. Yet in Runcorn the prevailing spirit is "All the way with Y.K.K."-the corporate initials of Yoshida, the Japanese firm that is the world's biggest zipper manufacturer...
Japanese-style corporate paternalism is strong. Y.K.K. provides cut-rate bus service for employees, and Minami is forever throwing morale-boosting, all-hands-welcome parties at the Esso Motel in Runcorn. After work on Fridays, the Japanese make a point of dropping into Tanner's Pub near the plant to socialize, and the British employees like to ask one another "What doing?"-in good-humored imitation of their bosses' awkward English...
...Skelm and Runcorn are hardly begun. But already they have had to face a series of economic, political, and social problems. For example, Skelm attracted industry too rapidly, Runcorn too slowly. The Government pays 65 per cent of a company's factory costs and 45 per cent of its machinery costs as an incentive to move into a new town. In 1962-63, this subsidy, plus energetic recruiting by Skelm, attracted so many factories so quickly that a housing shortage resulted. In Runcorn, two years later, Wilson's restrictive economic policy so discouraged industrial expansion that the new town could...
Skelm and Runcorn faced political difficulties arising out of the dual authority in the town. The national Government had formed a corpora- tion over each new town to draw up its master plan, provide utilities, and build factories and housing. The local government--the Urban District Council--was still largely in charge of providing playgrounds, community centers, schools, police protection, and fire service. The corporation was allowed to spend only fourteen dollars per person on these services...
...Runcorn, the Urban District Council had invested a lot of money in the old town center, and resented the corporation's decision to build a new shopping complex in another place. The Council hired its own group of architects, engineers, and planners to draw up an alternate plan for the new town. Their plan just happened to place the new shopping complex smack in the old town center. The Minister of Housing and Local Government had to be called in to resolve the debate--in favor of the corporation...