Pre-Year Plan

(See front cover and pictures, pp. 94-99)

Anthony Grzebyk is the biggest man in the Plymouth automobile plant in Detroit. He stands 6 ft. 4 1/2in., weighs 300 lb., measures 48 in. around the waist. His towering bulk, his stolid face are familiar to nearly every worker under the 22 acres of Plymouth roof. He works on the assembly line in the evening shift, arriving a half-hour early just as the day shift is quitting at 3:30 p. m. To day shift and to evening shift he is known simply as "Big Tony."

Big Tony Grzebyk was born 30 years ago at Eleanor in the Pennsylvania coal fields. At 13 he followed his father into the mines. When Big Tony was 17 the Grzebyks moved to Detroit, and the family have been automobile workers ever since. Big Tony has been at Plymouth for six years. His brother Pete works at Briggs Manufacturing, his brother Frank at Thompson Products. His brother Stanley is not old enough to work. All the Grzebyks except Peter, who is married, live with their widowed mother in a six-room frame house at No. 5028 Belmont St. That is about two miles from the Plymouth plant, and Big Tony Grzebyk walks it, carrying his supper of three thick sandwiches and a pail of coffee. The Grzebyks (pronounced Gzebbik) are Poles.

At 4 p. m. Big Tony Grzebyk is at his place on the line. From a conveyor belt he lifts a 72-lb. radiator, deftly puts it into place on a chassis on the crawling assembly line. For Big Tony this is child's play but sometimes he trades jobs with another man who inserts (but does not tighten) the radiator bolts. How many radiators he puts on per hour depends on the speed of the assembly line. Big Tony has never bothered to count.*

Supper time for the evening shift is 8 p. m., a half-hour. At 12:30 a. m. Big Tony's eight-hour day is done. He is in bed by 1 a. m., often sleeping until 2 p. m. the next afternoon. Occasionally he gets up earlier to bowl, his record score being 250. On Sunday he goes to a Catholic church with his mother, takes in a cinema in the afternoon or evening. Big Tony Grzebyk works a five-day week at 90-c- per hour--$36 for a 40-hour week.

Peaks into Valleys. What interests Big Tony Grzebyk and his fellow workers in the automobile industry far more than their hourly wage is their annual wage. A diemaker may ask and get $2 per hour for his skill. But if he can get only ten weeks of work per year he is worse off than the 50-c- day laborer who has year-round employment. Trouble has always been that automobile sales were highly seasonal, rising to tremendous peaks in April and May, dropping into deep valleys in November and December. Production and employment followed the same steep curves. This pattern was cut in the industry's youth when 99% of all cars were open models and winter motoring was considered a sport. Even after the proportion of closed to open models was precisely reversed in the 1920's, old buying habits lingered.

To round off the jagged pattern of the automobile year, the Industry in 1935 made a momentous decision. It would hold its annual shows not in January, as it had been doing for 35 years, but in November, just before automobile sales usually bogged deepest. At the New York Show last year the 1936 models were introduced two months ahead of time, with the result that more cars were produced in the last three months of 1935 than in any previous final quarter in automotive history. This week the Industry will open the second season of its pre-year plan with 28 shows held simultaneously throughout the land. Like first-string debutantes, new models have hitherto come out in Manhattan before being introduced in Boston, Baltimore, Chicago et al. Simultaneous shows are expected to get this automotive year off to an even faster start than last.

Early shows make for stabilization by 1) stimulating retail demand with a new product and 2) providing more time to stock dealers in advance of the spring rush. Even allowing for Recovery, it is estimated that only 475,000 cars would have been sold wholesale in the winter of 1935-36 had the date of the Show not been changed. As it turned out, 825,000 were sold in the three months following the November introduction. Considering the various seasonal factors involved, the early show cut about 500,000 cars from the spring sales peak, dumped them into the autumn-winter valley. Fresh retail demand accounted for some 60% of this total, dealer stocking for the other 40%.

Historically the pre-year stabilization plan dates back to March 1934, when President Roosevelt personally settled the threatened automobile strike of that year. High in Detroit's General Motors Building behind soaped windows gathered all the bigwigs of motordom except Henry Ford. Even he condescended to have an observer on hand. By direct wire to Washington the assembled motor industry wangled the famed "proportional representation" interpretation of NRA's labor Section 73. This was a stiff jolt for Labor because it amounted to recognition of the company unions which the manufacturers had been busily promoting since the beginning of NRA. What concessions the motormen made at the time are something of a mystery. But when their code came up for renewal, the President announced a committee to investigate automobile labor. And the following spring the early show was officially announced.

Actually the automobile industry had been pondering its seasonal nature long before the windows were soaped for the Detroit meeting in 1934. Some manufacturers, notably Buick, had already found that an early launching of new models tended to keep sales and employment on a more even keel. The seemingly obvious answer to seasonal unemployment--accumulating inventories of the finished product--was too risky for the motor industry. Even if the capital and space could be found to carry and store 500,000 cars, a change in style or economic conditions might leave the manufacturers holding a bag which would break their financial backs.

What motor makers can do in slow seasons is to build up inventories of parts, particularly sub-assembly jobs like axles, motors, transmissions. Notable have been the results. In 1934 at the bottom of the production curve when output was running about 20,000 cars per week, the industry was providing less than 8,500,000 man-hours of work per week. Last year the worst figure, when production was at almost the same level, was 12,000,000 man-hours per week. Total work provided by "banking" in the past motor year is estimated at 30,000,000 man-hours. The early show provided 50,000,000 man-hours. Of course, this was not additional work: it was work done in the autumn and winter which would otherwise be done in the spring. But it meant that nearly 100,000 more motor workers had jobs when they most needed them. In the industries which supply the motor trade like steel, glass, rubber, chemicals, textiles, the pre-year plan made another 50,000 winter jobs.

Hours into Dollars. The 90-c--per-hour wage of Plymouth's Big Tony Grzebyk is a little better than average for the industry (80-c-) His earnings for 1936, with special bonuses, will foot up to more than $1,800, which is somewhat better than average for steady automobile workers (about $1,500 this year). In 1931 Big Tony got ten days work in the spring, was laid off until June, then worked for the rest of the year, a total of some 31 weeks. The next year he was sick for two months and his work was even more irregular. In 1933 things started to pick up, and his job held through until June 1934. In August and September of that year he got in about six weeks' time, was laid off until the middle of November. Since then he has been a ''steady" worker, which means that he gets at least 46 weeks per year. In the first year of stabilization he was laid off for six weeks during retooling for 1936 models. This year for 1937 retooling, he was laid off less than five weeks.

For the Industry's 400,000-odd workers, employment in the first eight months of the model-year 1936 fluctuated within a 7% range. This covered a period when automobile production fluctuated more than 100%, from a low of 217,000 cars in February to a high of 460,000 in April.

Of course, this amazing stability did not carry over into the period of retooling. No scheme has yet been devised to bridge the employment crevasse of the annual shut-down in preparation for new models. The automobile worker regards it as inevitable and lays by savings to tide him over. In the last shut-down season there was no rise in the Detroit relief rolls, now down to less than 20,000. With shutdowns coming in late summer the regular layoff can be treated as something of a vacation. Formerly a worker got his payless "vacation" just before Christmas.

Workers have not been the only beneficiaries of the pre-year plan. The rate of layoff and return have been reduced 25%. Fewer men have quit, fewer have been fired (layoffs do not count as discharges). For manufacturers this lower rate of labor turnover makes for more efficient operation, fewer accidents. Although the dealer now has to carry more cars on his floor during the winter, he, too, has benefited because his selling season is longer. The one snag is used cars. A new model may excite a prospect into an early purchase but second-hand cars are still bought in the spring.

Labor into Unions? Not a motor maker but a Labor sympathizer once described Detroit as a "workingman's paradise." Automobile plants are clean, well-ventilated, scientifically lighted and entirely lacking in the sound & fury of, say, a steel mill. The speed of assembly and subassembly lines is not that pictured by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. Chief complaint is not the monotony of putting a washer on a bolt or a tire on a wheel eight hours on end but a peculiar nervousness which comes from having to do it within a limited time, even if that time is liberal. It has to be done. If it is not, the entire plant may be slowed down.

More than 15,000 parts go into the average modem car and each part must be at the right spot at precisely the right time. So perfect is the planning that a car scheduled to be blue, picks up its blue wheels at one place on the assembly line, its blue body at another, its blue lights at still another, all having come off the conveyor belts in the proper order with, perhaps, red parts just before, green parts just after.

This complete dependence on timing is one reason for the motormen's bitter opposition to union labor. They are too vulnerable to be comfortable. In the autumn of 1933 a tool & die makers' strike tied up most of the industry, many a model at the 1934 show being practically handmade. The strike in the Chevrolet transmission plant in Toledo two years ago temporarily crippled the entire Chevrolet organization. Since that experience General Motors has done what Henry Ford did previously--made sure of at least two sources of supply. The haunting fear of possible famine had something to do with the motor industry's new-found interest in banking parts.

Labor espionage and the more direct methods of fighting unionism are as common in the automobile as in any other big open-shop industry in the U. S. Until the advent of the New Deal, boomtown Detroit was hardly aware that it was in fact open-shop. Its working population had drifted in from rural regions where unions never existed. Indeed, many an automobile worker learned about unions for the first time from the lips of the boss in 1933 when company unionism was budding under NRA's Section 7a.

Even with the spade work done in advance by the companies, labor organizers have made little headway in Detroit itself though they have done better in the automobile plants outside the city. United Automobile Workers of America, a merger of most of the labor organizations whose internecine struggles helped contribute to Labor's failure in Detroit, claims a membership of some 60,000, which is less than one-seventh of all auto, body and parts workers, and is probably an exaggeration at that. But automobiles are on John L. Lewis' list of prospects for industrial organization (see p. 25).

Cars into Country. Most effective way of inoculating against unionism thus far discovered by the motormakers is to grant in some measure at least, what their workers really want. The union platforms call for stabilization of employment, which the companies are giving. They call for higher wage scales, which have been raised above the 1929 level, although the cost of living is still below that year. They call for annual earnings of $2,000 per worker. No small number of workers are already getting well over $1,500. They call for bonuses in proportion to profits. Chrysler voted its 67,000 employes a $4,000,000 Christmas present last week. With the two previous bonuses paid this year Chrysler will have paid out $8,300,000 in extra compensation in 1936, equivalent to nearly $2 per share on Chrysler stock and from $105 to $155 for each Chrysler worker. Few"appreciation fund" to be distributed to all employes earning up to $2,400. Individual bonuses will range from $35 to $60. At the same time General Motors raised wage scales 5-c- per hour.

So long as the workers do not ask for outside unions, they can usually get a sympathetic ear. Even the company unions and works councils, far from perfect collective bargaining agencies though they may be, have served to right many a labor wrong, particularly inequalities in pay. Every spontaneous move to create a corporate social life is encouraged. All companies go in for annual picnics, outings, field days. Chrysler has its choir, Chevrolet its glee club. General Motors office workers have a luncheon club, most popular speaker being Executive Vice President William S. Knudsen. General Motors plant workers go in for athletic clubs. Henry Ford's specialty remains a high minimum wage, now $6 per day.

Neither corporate nor union solidarity is easy to create in Detroit with its 1,500,000 population. Plants and workers are scattered throughout the city with no geographical relationship whatever. But the automobile industry has been moving out of Detroit into the surrounding countryside, partly because of the city's high taxes, partly because of a general tendency toward decentralization. Detroit in the automobile sense now covers an immense area including cities like Flint, Lansing, Toledo, Windsor, Ont.

Most novel experiments in decentralization are those of Henry Ford in the little towns and cities of southeastern Michigan. Typical pattern is an old grist mill converted into a parts factory with its workers living on small farms. At Nankin Mills, eleven workers with automatic machinery turn out hundreds of thousands of rivets and other small metal parts. At Northville 300 workers turn out 1,000,000 valves per month on the edge of an artificial pond with an overshot waterwheel. At Waterford 62 workers make precision instruments. At another old grist mill at Plymouth 36 workers make taps (for threading), using as an auxiliary source of power Henry Ford's smallest turbo-generator (5 h. p.). In Ypsilanti is a relatively large "little industry" (1,000 workers), manufacturing Ford starters and generators. Thus does Henry Ford find concrete expression of his belief in linking farm and factory.

Industry into Action. Ford's idea-of-the- year was not in socio-economics but in the plain business of selling automobiles. For the first time in its 33-year history Ford Motor Co. last week held a dealer convention. In chartered planes, in their own cars, in 41 special trains some 8,000 dealers descended upon Detroit for a formal presentation of the 1937 Ford. A giant stage in the Coliseum at the State Fair Ground was decorated in blue, white and vermilion with a speaker's platform on one side, a balancing bandstand on the other, new Fords in the centre. After the ceremonies, the dealers piled into 340 buses to take as a present to Mr. Ford the oldest windmill in the U.S.

For old Mr. Ford the descent of the dealers must have been a trying experience. The Dearborn individualist has never liked to admit that his product needed salesmanship. But Ford slipped this year, dropping not only behind Chevrolet, but also for the first time since 1933 behind Chrysler Corp. in total sales. Latest complete registration figures showed General Motors first with 44.2% of all 1936 cars, Chrysler with 24.2%, Ford with 22.9%. That left 8.7% of the market for all the rest of the industry. In 1929 the independents had 24.5% of the market. During the past year two independent makers have disappeared--Hupmobile (with the stagnation of Hupp Motor Car Corp.) and Reo, which decided to concentrate solely on trucks and buses. While the independents have lost ground relatively, their actual sales have soared with Recovery--companies like Nash, Hudson, Packard, Studebaker do not have to sell a million cars to make money.

A quota of 1,800,000 units was set for the Ford dealers in 1937. Total car and truck production in 1935 was 4,119,000. Estimates for the full calendar year 1936 are 4,600,000. In 1937 the Industry is shooting for the 1929 high mark of 5,600,000.

* Average speed of assembly line is 85 cars per hour.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.