Workers Help Management

What did Don Nelson think he was doing? Did he mean to turn industry over to labor? Or vice versa? Management and labor both snorted these angry questions three months ago when Don Nelson asked them to form joint labor and management committees to speed production. Last week the answers were in.

With pardonable pride, WPB announced that more than 800 plants with some 2,000,000 workers had formed labor-management production committees (including 51 in Du Pont, 50 in U.S. Steel, 25 in Westinghouse) to build morale and to collect ideas for increasing production. Their coverage ranged all the way from 45,000 participants at Douglas Aircraft to 19 in Portland, Ore.'s Armstrong Manufacturing Co. (which makes saw-sharpeners). Hundreds more joint committees were in the making. Moreover, WPB files were swarming with enthusiastic reports from the field:

> Westinghouse Electric's huge Cleveland plant boosted production 17% in the first month of its War Production Committee. At Westinghouse's Pittsburgh plant, 48 of the first 500 worker suggestions for better production were good enough to be put into use. Prime Westinghouse ballyhoo scheme (besides cash or war-bond prizes for good ideas, which are common to almost all wardrive committees): dividing the workers into production teams, each with a "squadron flag" that flies with the Stars & Stripes when the team is ahead of schedule.

> At Douglas Aircraft, there were enough good ideas in the first 500 suggestions to hit the jackpot with cumulative savings of 2,000 man-hours a day--enough to build seven big bombers in a year. A new tooling gadget for milling wing spars cut off 15-20 hours; a woman war worker in the lacquer department figured out how to save 90 woman-hours a day.

> Boeing--whose suggestion box predated Nelson's plan--announced that it was "swamped with ideas": in the first four months of its plan, there were 3,554 suggestions, of which 2,842 were "unsuitable" (not feasible, suggested before, outside the company's control, etc.), 40 were adopted, 672 "under investigation."

> Last week, North American Aviation gave away $10,000 in war bonds for practicable production ideas. At the tiny Morey Machinery Co.'s New York City plant (machine tools), one workman figured out how to reduce a 50-minute operation to nine minutes.

> In Chicago, Continental Roll & Steel Foundry has upped production 20% with 200 workable employe suggestions since January. Elgin Watch Co. (at Elgin and Aurora, Ill.) has seen its fuse plant zoom to 65% above its production quota in the two months its shop committee has been in existence. Aurora's Independent Pneumatic Tool Co. has seen a 21% production increase, is hauling in 100 new production ideas a week--and paying for good ones at the low rate of one $5 defense stamp apiece, because the committee asked the company not to pay more.

> In most plants, slogan contests are being run as an integral part of the committees' work. Samples: "Speed the Wheels to Beat the Heels" (from an American Steel & Wire sloganeer); "Speed 'Em for Freedom" (Curtiss-Wright); "Jappy, We'll Knock You Slap Happy" (Cincinnati's Boye & Emmes Machine Tool Co.).

Don Nelson himself would be the last to take full credit for all this excitement--by & large, it was still another sign of the U.S.'s grim intention to win the war. Moreover, hundreds of plants (notably in the auto industry) that shied away from labor-management committees per se were using the same kind of ballyhoo and production incentives with equally good results. As all the U.S. well knows, there is nothing like good ballyhoo (see cut) to put a good basic urge to work.

But last week there was new evidence that the Nelson plan deserved much credit. The trade paper Mill & Factory released a "survey with no holds barred" of how it had worked in a random sample of 88 out of the first 300 plants to set up production-drive committees. Despite management's early fears (and the survey was built up exclusively from management reports), 91% of those with concrete opinions reported that labor had not used the drive to encroach on management; 78% said labor had used them "in a sincere effort to increase production"; 62% said they had received more worthwhile production suggestions than before; 67% that the plan justified the time and effort it took to operate.

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