Word: seanlon
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...captains Larry Seanlon and Steve May are both lettermen, and both stand six feet tall. Tallest man on the squad is six-three center Al Benson, senior letterman who may by second-string to sophomore Steve...
...formula and the committees are the formal part of the plan. They are not, insists, an automatic blueprint for good labor relations. Labor relations are human relations, and cannot be governed by formulae. As Seanlon says, in describing the plan: "The adult process of sitting down and slugging out problems together requires a change of attitude." This is the one absolute requirement for the success of the plan. Whatever previous relations may have been, and Seanlon has successfully installed the plan in companies where they had been bad, there must at least be the willingness on both sides to undertake...
Often it took the fear of imminent bankrupted to bring union and management around. This sort of life-raft conversion characterized most of Seanlon's clients in the late 'thirties, and, as he recounts, "Slichter's boys came down from Harvard and wrote theses about our work. They concluded that the plan worked, but they said it wouldn't work outside of a bankrupt situation. That was a challenge." Seanlon has met the challenge: his plan has worked as well in profitable plants as in failing ones...
Besides the attitude of union and management, there are other important factors. The amount of intelligence and imagination available on both sides counts heavily. Large size is a complication; most of the Scanlon plants are small--averaging perhaps 500 workers. (Seanlon, however, has installed the plan in a Canadian steel plant of 5,000, and is at the moment experimenting in a subsidiary plant of a large corporation). But in spite of the limitations, the 40-odd companies in which the plan has been introduced represent a very wide variety of enterprises...
...tends to create a team where before there were two factions. The union is strengthened, in the new role of junior partner with a say in company policy. Men in the shop flood the production committees with suggestions. Production goes way up; spoilage and waste are cut down. As Seanlon says, "The men know who their competitors are"; the whole company becomes a competing unit...