Boulware Bows Out

As personnel and press boss at General Electric, Vice President Lemuel R. Boulware, 62, was one of the most controversial labor-relations managers in the history of a new art. A tough, trap-jawed Kentuckian, Boulware was a hard bargainer during contract negotiations and never failed to point out what a company like G.E. did for its employees. Many businessmen considered "Boulwarism" a smart strategy for combating Big Labor, imitated it widely, even though unions bitterly hated it.

Last week an oddly curt press release from Boulware's own department announced that Boulware was being replaced by Vice President Jack S. Parker, 39, manager of the jet-engine division in Evendale, Ohio. Parker came to G.E. only seven years ago, quickly took on top jobs in various divisions, but none in personnel.

The press release, a classic example of the deadpan management announcement that reveals more than it conceals, said that the replacement was made three years before Boulware's scheduled retirement (at 65) to "assure continuity and added strength in further pioneering advances in the company's relations program while Mr. Boulware is able to consult with his successor."

Editors assumed that Boulware had been fired, but G.E. President Ralph Cordiner denied it and fired off a letter to the New York Times. "The purpose of the move is to assure continuity of the policies and approaches pioneered by Mr. Boulware." Cordiner insisted that Parker will need long preparation for union negotiations in the next few years, and is a carefully selected comer with a bright reputation for making G.E. popular in plant communities.

Boulware's assignment from Cordiner ten years ago was similar: to sell labor-troubled G.E. to G.E. employees. Boulware promptly forged such hard-selling methods as the Employee Relations Newsletter, which plugged the best side of G.E., never failed to point out bloopers by union leaders, big and small, urged political action for free enterprise, even denounced federal labor policies. In the early '50s Boulware also refused to make any ideological distinction between James Carey's new C.I.O. union and the Redlining United Electrical Workers it was seeking to oust from G.E., arguing that the law then required him to treat both the same. But despite its union opposition, Boulwarism seemed to work; in recent years G.E. signed more favorable union contracts than did Westinghouse.

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