For the Workers

Britain's new Minister of Aircraft Production, socialistic Sir Stafford Cripps, last week took control of a big aircraft factory near London and installed a new manager. An editorial in Labor's Daily Herald showed how it could happen there:

"The workers . . . considered that there was a deficiency of planning and cooperation on the part of the management.

"At meetings called by their shop stewards they instructed the workers' representatives on the Joint Production Committee to protest.

"The shop stewards' committee and the workers' representatives on the Joint Production Commitee together drew up a statement of the case, which was sent through the Trade Union District Production Committee to the Regional Production Board.

"The result was that Sir Stafford Cripps . . . appointed a new managing director [Steelman George Ernest Marden] with full powers, whom he personally introduced to the Joint Production Committee, and that he has promised to see the workers again two months hence if they still think that the organization of the factory is unsound."

Other newspapers were significantly mum on the matter, and the City was horrified at such bold Government interference with private enterprise. But uncompromising Vegetarian Cripps said coldly: "Inefficiency in management is as great a breach of duty to the country as absenteeism amongst the workers. The country cannot afford to and would not tolerate the waste of labor either by absenteeism or through bad direction or management."

Said new Boss Marden after a visit to the plant:

"We talked to shop stewards and they talked to us, and I don't mind saying what they said was straight. I told them we'd got to make that factory go flat out. I was very much impressed with their attitude."

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