Word: steels
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Under Ben Fairless, Big Steel underwent its biggest expansion-and a growing friendliness with the unions. After Roger Blough went to U.S. Steel in 1942 from the Manhattan law firm of White & Case, he became experienced in labor negotiations. But he was a different sort of man from Fairless, and his attitude toward the union gradually stiffened in the face of its growing demands. He was hardly more than a year in the chairman's chair when the union in 1956 won its biggest wage victory. Blough has never forgotten that defeat. Says he blandly: "We would like...
Dutch Stubbornness. Blough runs Big Steel with the quiet confidence and sure hand of a man who thoroughly knows his job. He is a prodigious worker who still puts in twelve hours a day at the job of keeping tabs on every aspect of his business. He gets up at 5 or 6 a.m., jots down ideas and reads newspapers and magazines before arriving at the office around 8. He has half a day's work done before most of his executives come in, sometimes embarrasses them by assuming that everyone keeps his hours and calling their offices before...
Blough is an alloy composed of shyness (he is still not well known in the steel industry on a personal basis), unpretentiousness and Pennsylvania Dutch stubbornness. He likes to sing hymns and old folk songs, browse in art galleries, cook in the old-fashioned kitchen of the Victorian, Hawley, Pa. house where he and his wife spend their weekends. He has two married twin daughters. He has the temperament and patience of an experienced trout caster (which he is), the fascination for things mechanical of an engineer (which he is not). He rarely goes on vacation, but likes to stroll...
Blough guided Big Steel through a major reorganization to keep it up with the times. He transformed the corporation from a sprawling holding company with dozens of subsidiary corporations into an integrated corporate unit, spun off businesses, e.g., shipping, that did not fit into the company's basic pattern. To get Big Steel on a lean, efficient basis, he vigorously pushed a standard-cost system for evaluating every job in the company. He increased the company's incentive system until it now covers 75% of all employees. (Blough, whose salary is $265,000 a year, also picked...
...with his eye on the future as well as the present, Blough has vigorously pushed U.S. Steel's expenditures for research, built the world's largest ferrous-metallurgy laboratory at Monroeville, Pa. With the rest of industry, U.S. Steel's scientists are studying the behavior of ores to make the most effective use of raw materials, working on special steels needed in rocketry and nuclear weapons, and turning out such new consumer products as aluminum-coated steel sheets for the automobile industry, vinyl-covered sheets in many colors for TV cabinets, wall panels, doors...