MANAGEMENT: Bundy Saves & Shares

Like other members of the United Automobile Workers of America, C.I.O., the employes of Detroit’s Bundy Tubing Co. wanted a raise of 18½¢ an hour. Said Bundy flatly: nothing doing. Labor productivity was down 50%, and the company could not afford higher wages.

The U.A.W. knew that productivity had fallen. But the unionists insisted on the raise anyway. Bundy’s president and majority stockholder Wendell Anderson, son of one of the founders of the Ford Motor Co., told them how they could get it: work on an incentive wage plan. Said the U.A.W., which hates such plans: no go. After much haggling, both sides compromised. The U.A.W. got its 18½¢ raise; it also got an incentive plan with a sugar-coated name: Cost Savings Sharing Plan. Bundy got around the union’s deep-seated objections to incentive plans, which it feels are only a euphemism for the hated speed-up and the pitting of one worker against another, by agreeing to pay incentive bonuses on the basis of total plant production.

On the basis of a typical 16-week period, the company set a standard for labor costs: 30¢ on each net sales dollar. Whenever employes raised productivity enough to drive costs below that figure, the saving would be split 50-50 between company and employes (each employe’s share depended upon number of hours worked).

Last week, after six months of the new plan, Bundy totted up the results: the company and the employes had each pocketed $213,288 (each employe averaged 21½¢ an hour in addition to an average hourly wage of $1.31); labor efficiency had jumped 35%; absenteeism had fallen 35%; union grievances were at a minimum; employe suggestions had made many improvements in operating efficiency.

One of the biggest boons to Bundy was that the unionists made loafers go to work. (Once a group of women threatened to strike unless their shop steward was forced to work and produce his share of the profits.) Said one union official: “The plan is a great success and we urge everyone to work like hell.”

To revive the habit of courtesy to customers (a wartime casualty in England as in the U.S.), Retailer Fred Trippett of Hull instituted a novel incentive plan last week. Trippett handed out envelopes containing ten shilling notes to customers chosen at random, asked them to give them to the “most helpful and considerate” clerk. Said Trippett of his plan: “I have 25 girls on my staff and it is certainly keeping-them on their toes.”