MANAGEMENT: A Prayer for Henry

Until pachydermatous (275 lb.) Frederick Riebel Jr. was ousted from his $30,000-a-year job as president of Brewster Aeronautical Corp. three weeks ago, he kept his mouth tightly closed. But last week, before the House Naval Affairs Committee, which is probing Brewster’s snail-paced production, Mr. Riebel rattled all the Brewster skeletons in public.

Sometimes weeping softly, sometimes roaring with rage, frog-voiced Mr. Riebel blamed all the troubles at Brewster on the “hellish” contract it had with C.I.O.’s United Automobile Workers. He lashed out at the union’s tough, headstrong boss, Tom De Lorenzo, impaled lesser officials as “punks and heels,” denounced the local itself as that “gang of forty thieves.” Carefully he explained that those opinions had grown in him only after he came to Brewster, last March. He had cozied up to the union. Said he: “I got in bed with Tom De Lorenzo, with the cover tucked right up to my chin. I guess we were sort of bundling together.”

Baffled Bundler. But Bundler Riebel soon found out that “every time I got in bed with Tom De Lorenzo I got out with less than I went in with.” Riebel stopped bundling, started battling. He got nowhere that way, either. Meanwhile he had other troubles, which he tried to solve by firing top Brewster officials.

And in the nation’s weirdest war plant, he found such things as this: Brewster was trying to build dive-bombers for the British without complete drawings of the plane or a list of materials needed.

Committeemen properly asked: In view of all this, could Brewster’s new president, Shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser, get Brewster into production?

Replied Riebel: “Oh, I’ve dreaded that question more than any the committee could ask. It’s a matter of embarrassment to a dear, dear friend of mine. . . . I say a little prayer every night for Kaiser’s success at Brewster.”

Certain Kaiser. But pachydermatous Mr. Kaiser, who also appeared before the committee, showed no embarrassment, wanted no prayers. He calmly stated that Brewster’s failure to produce planes for the British and for the U.S. Navy was due to lack of cooperation between labor & management. He promised to end this and get Brewster producing on schedule.

But the Navy, which finds Brewster 18 months behind schedule on contracts totaling $175,000,000, is almost sick & tired of the whole thing. Retired Navy Captain George C. Westervelt, who ran Brewster for a month when the Navy took it over, reiterated the ominous warning given by James V. Forrestal, Under Secretary of the Navy. He told the committee: if Kaiser fails, all of Brewster’s Navy contracts should be transferred to other companies.