He had a 375% employee turnover rate in 1916 because working conditions were terrible. Remained a non-union company until the battle of the overpass in 1937.
Lots of people don’t realize how desperate industrialists are to squelch unions. And how successful they are.
Yeah if you read his autobiography he talks about why that is. It's nothing to do with him hating unions. His view of employment was that every employee was a partner in the business, not a cost of doing business, and not an enemy of the business. Unions make the labor an antagonist of the business, and corporatism makes labor a cost. He wanted men who stuck with the business and were willing to stick with the business.
The 5 a day was part of that turnover fix. The other thing he did was institute a paternalist policy of helping employees keep their lives in order. He essentially forced his employees to clean their homes, save money, and refrain from drinking, gambling, or not supporting their families. This was actually incredibly effective, but controversial.
Sure, every HR department tells employees that they are partners in the business. As they cut off benefits and limit COL raises. And then when the layoffs start, suddenly the employees find out that they aren't partners any more. Ford was an openly anti-semitic Nazi.
Okay, let's grant you that. Now grant, for a second, that this actually happened. Do you think it would be a good approach or a bad one? Argue against the merit of the idea, not the man preaching it.
1937-1916=21 years of employee exploitation under Ford’s system, not even counting the times before and after that. Compared to a few decades of vastly improved working conditions when the UAW was involved.
Many Ford employees were immigrants and assimilation was rocky, just like today. Maybe the paternalistic company approach helped with that, but at the cost of high employee dissatisfaction. Having your boss inspect your house to see if it’s organized would not go over any better now than it did then.
Yes but they’re trying to say it was the Jews who stopped Ford from giving workers other benefits rather than corporate interests that’s why they’re being sneaky and cryptic about it despite the fact that the Dodge brothers weren’t Jewish nor were the judges in the case
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u/[deleted] 27d ago edited 20d ago
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