Trouble at Jahco

From Jack & Heintz Precision Industries, Inc., peacetime version of Cleveland's famed war baby, President William S. Jack departed last week on a year's "leave of absence." But few Clevelanders expected that Bill Jack would ever come back to Jahco. Reason: Jahco's new owners were not sold on his unorthodox employe coddling.

When blatant Bill Jack and his quiet partner Ralph M. Heintz peddled their war baby last spring to Manhattan engineer B. C. Milner Jr. and Byron C. Foy, onetime vice president of Chrysler Corp., they got 1) roughly $8 million in cash and stock, 2) five-year contracts at $40,000 a year, 3) promises to retain their employe program.

But when Bill Jack recently returned to work after a sick spell, he didn't like what he found. He could no longer pick up a mike, talk to his associates (employes) over Jahco's five-plant public-address system any time he wanted to. Now, his remarks had to be cleared by a newly hired public-relations expert.

Making Things Clear. Bill Jack soon exploded his resentment in Cleveland's newspapers. So the board of directors decided that Jack was to go on leave, with Board Chairman Byron Foy taking over his job. The board also said that "Mr. Jack . . . wishes to make clear that there is no disagreement whatsoever over the personnel policies."

Bill Jack kept a straight face, refused to talk to newsmen. But his son, Vice President William Russell Jack, spilled the beans. Cried young Jack: "Bill was sore as hell about the gag rule. They would have fired him if they could, but they didn't want to make a martyr out of him."

Forthwith, Russ Jack, Adeline Bowman (Bill's secretary, whose $39,356 salary and bonuses made headlines in 1942), four other associates resigned. To quiet other restive associates, Ralph Heintz addressed them: "We might as well face the truth. . . . Now we are in a competitive market. For the first time, we have got to think of the stockholders."

Christmas bonuses and free Florida vacations were now out, but free lunches, music, vitamin pills would be continued. Jahco, which will lose $1.5 million this year, hopes to get in the black this month, hit its production stride next year. Already on hand, said Foy, were $56 million worth of orders for refrigerator compressors, fractional horsepower motors, ball bearings, magnetos.

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