Monday, January 5, 1970

[Ford] Gives $10,000,000 To 26,000 Employees







 [Ford] Gives $10,000,000 To 26,000 Employees



Ford to Run Automobile Plant 24 Hours Daily in Profit-Sharing Plan


MINIMUM WAGE $5 A DAY


No Employee to be Discharged Except for Unfaithfulness or Hopeless Inefficiency


Special to The New York Times

Detroit, Mich., Jan. 5. 1914 -- Henry Ford,[1] head of the Ford Motor Company, announced today one of the most remarkable business moves of his entire remarkable career. In brief it is:

To give to the employees of the company $10,000,000[2] of the profits of the 1914 business, the payments to be made semi-monthly and added to the pay checks.[3]

To run the factory continuously instead of only eighteen hours a day, giving employment to several thousand more men by employing three shifts of eight hours each, instead of only two nine-hour shifts, as at present.

To establish a minimum wage scale of $5 per day. Even the boy who sweeps up the floors will get that much.

Before any man in any department of the company who does not seem to be doing good work shall be discharged, an opportunity will be given to him to try to make good in every other department. No man shall be discharged except for proved unfaithfulness or irremediable inefficiency.

The Ford Company's financial statement of Sept. 20, 1912, showed assets of $20,815,785.63, and surplus of $14,745,095.57. One year later it showed assets of $35,033,919.86 and surplus of $28,124,173.68. Dividends paid out during the year, it is understood, aggregated $10,000,000. The indicated profits for the year, therefore, were about $37,597,312. The company's capital stock authorized and outstanding, is $2,000,000. There is no bond issue.

About 10 per cent of the employees, boys and women, will not be affected by the profit sharing, but all will have the benefit of the $5 minimum wage. Those among them who are supporting families, however, will have a share similar to the men of more than 22 years of age.
In all, about 26,000 employees will be affected. Fifteen thousand now are at work in the Detroit factories. Four thousand more will be added by the institution of the eight-hour shift. The other seven thousand employees are scattered all over the world, in the Ford branches. They will share the same as the Detroit employees.

Personal statements were made by Henry Ford and James Couzens, Treasurer of the company, regarding the move.

"It is our belief," said Mr. Couzens, "that social justice begins at home. We want those who have helped us to produce this great institution and are helping to maintain it to share our prosperity. We want them to have present profits and future prospects. Thrift and good service and sobriety, all will be enforced and recognized.

"Believing as we do, that a division of our earnings between capital and labor is unequal, we have sought a plan of relief suitable for our business. We do not feel sure that it is the best, but we have felt impelled to make a start, and make it now. We do not agree with those employers who declare, as did a recent writer in a magazine in excusing himself for not practicing what he preached, that 'movement toward the bettering of society must be universal.' We think that one concern can make a start and create an example for other employers. That is our chief object."[4]

"If we are obliged," said Mr. Ford, "to lay men off for want of sufficient work at any season we purpose to so plan our year's work that the lay-off shall be in the harvest time, July, August, and September,[5] not in the Winter. We hope in such case to induce our men to respond to the calls of the farmers for harvest hands, and not to lie idle and dissipate their savings. We shall make it our business to get in touch with the farmers and to induce our employees to answer calls for harvest help.

"No man will be discharged if we can help it, except for unfaithfulness or inefficiency. No foreman in the Ford Company has the power to discharge a man. He may send him out of his department if he does not make good. The man is then sent to our 'clearing house,' covering all the departments, and is tried repeatedly in other work, until we find the job he is suited for, provided he is honestly trying to render good service."
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[1] Henry Ford was 50 years old, and not all that different from a lot of other successful businessmen, when he summoned the Detroit press corps to his company’s offices on Monday, January 05, 1914. What he did that day made him a household name... Mr. Ford announced that he was DOUBLING THE PAY of thousands of his employees, TO AT LEAST $5 A DAY
[2]
$ 10,000,000.00
Total BONUS
           26,000.
Total # of PERSONS
 $              384.62
Each PERSON
76.9
# of Days @ $5/Dy
15.4
# of Weeks @ $5/Dy
3.6
# of Months @ $5/Dy

[3] The facts are that the 1914 style began in later 1913, perhaps as early as August, at the Highland Park plant. Ford issued a letter on July 28, 1913, announcing, “1914 prices effective August 1, 1913: Touring, $550; Runabout, $500; Town Car, $750.” The letter does not indicate a “new” style, however.
[4] “You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”  Elizabeth Warren - August 2011, while contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate, former White House financial reform adviser Elizabeth Warren gave a fiery defense of progressive economic theory at an event in Andover, Massachusetts.
[5] Historically the Model change at the Factory has always occurred in July an daugust because of this.  

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