Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/26

 and a 54-hour week. Should the packers put over this move it would be largely due to their careful cultivation of the Conference Board Plan.

The "splendid spirit of devotion to the company's interest" which Mr. Louis F. Swift, President of Swift & Company, refers to in his annual report for 1925, resulted in an approximately 18% return on the real investment of the stockholders. At the same time the average male worker in the packing house earned $27 a week. Mr. Swift attributes the "devotion" to employee representation.

In 1918 the trade unions were strong in the plants of the General Electric Company. The National War Labor Board, as was its custom, installed shop committees in settling a strike and the regular unions went along in good faith. After the war and the liquidation of the Labor Board, the regular unions were deflated but the shop committees remained to function under the domination of the company. In Lynn the plan has gained the loyalty of some of the old strike leaders who have accepted responsible posts on Joint Adjustment Committees. As with other plans of a certain type the Committee's decisions are referred to the plant manager whose decision is final. One old worker who has displayed high powers of absorption of the employers' point of view, writing in Management and Administration, says: "We passed thru two wage reductions without labor difficulty of any kind."

The General Electric News, a classy fortnightly published by the Lynn Works, is used chiefly to promote the plan. Minutes of the committees show the plan concerned chiefly with home ownership, safety rules, and the "general business outlook." The remainder of the pages of the News are packed with social notes, bridal showers, tributes paid by