Word: volvo
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...Blue-collar blues. By any name, the problems of low morale and numbing monotony surrounding production-line work have been of considerable concern in U.S. industry. One alternative often cited by various work reformers is the team-assembly concept pioneered by the Swedish automakers Saab and Volvo, according to which workers in small groups perform rotating tasks rather than installing the same widget on a fast-moving, impersonal line. American sociologists and union and management officials regularly return from tours of such plants favorably impressed. But recently a group of six Detroit engine-plant employees tried the Swedish...
...muscle. In Manhattan, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith refused to capitulate to demands by the Kuwait International Investment Co. to drop the U.S. branch of Lazard Frères as a participant in two lending syndicates that will raise $50 million for the Mexican government and $25 million for Volvo. Merrill Lynch Chairman Donald Regan was not about to exclude Lazard or slight its chairman, 76-year-old Andre Meyer. The Kuwaitis then dropped out of the deals. Echoing the typical sentiments among investment bankers, Paul Judy of Chicago's Becker and Warburg-Paribas beamed: "I'm glad...
...guess now I should tell you about the Volvo with the "Save The Whales" bumper sticker on the back and the peace medallion Mrs. Sizemore picked up at Saks Fifth Avenue, and the other kid who is a ski bum, and how much they enjoy New York magazine and African...
Vecsey deeply wants the Sizemore to have a better life, for Dan Sizemore to respect his work. But does he want them to drive a Volvo too? He projects his own cultural alienation onto his subjects. Just as their outsider friends do, as though there's no viable culture in Appalachia. His style suffers for the same reason--the well written and thorough approach to the Sizemores only fails when Vecsey goes into the house and transcribers domestic babbling, the "universals" of home life. Or when he refers to people we already know as the "sensitive...
Gyllenhammar remains convinced that Kalmar will work. "We think the extra capital involved will be offset by increased productivity," he says. Still, Gyllenhammar is a prudent manager, and Volvo is prepared to adapt if the Kalmar experiment fails. The plant was designed in such a way that it can be re-converted into a conventional assembly line at a minimal cost...