MANAGEMENT: Haunted House

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The hexed Brewster Aeronautical Corp., which has sandbagged four presidents in 16 months, last week finished off a fifth. Hoarse-voiced, 275-lb. Frederick Riebel Jr., after seven months of falling through trap doors, tripping over wires and hearing noises in the woodwork, gave up and left. The big news was his successor. Shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser, who has been Brewster's board chairman since March, went in.

The snares that brought down the behemoth Mr. Riebel and now faced Mr. Kaiser were still the same: 1) an ironclad, waterproof contract with C.LO.'s United Automobile Workers which straitjackets management, banning it from firing, shifting or disciplining workers without union permission, 2) bad control of materials, which sometimes forced workers to loaf.

Big Fred Riebel had tried to wriggle out of the strait jacket, but he was soon laced in tighter than ever by the rough & tumble Brewster union. He had no time to untangle the materials mess Result: Brewster failed in production on the Navy's Corsair fighter, although production of the so-so Brewster dive-bomb er picked up. In August, month of Brewster's latest strike, not a Corsair was delivered.

The Senate's Truman Committee called in Kaiser and gave him a Hobson's choice: to reorganize plant management, ie., to take over Brewster production himself, or resign from the board. Reluctantly, Kaiser took over. Said the miracle man glumly: "It's not an alluring prospect to take over what's reputed to be the worst situation in the country."

Pulmotor Department. To help revive Brewster, Kaiser installed his tall, bespectacled son, Henry Jr., who has been Kaiser's eyes and legs on many a West Coast project, as administrative assistant. His job: to kill off the hex. Then the War Labor Board gave Kaiser a mighty boost by designating an arbiter to settle disputes on the spot, and put Brewster's union on probation for six months. With this solid backing, Kaiser sat down with the tough, headstrong boss of the Brewster union, Tom De Lorenzo,* got from him a promise that the union would cooperate. Mr. Kaiser, newly confident, predicted: "Brewster will be back on schedule this month. By the end of the year we will make up all our plane deficiencies and be hitting our schedules regularly."