Management: Crackdown in Milwaukee

• Share

For years, American Motors Corp.'s Milwaukee body plant has been notorious as the most inefficient of the company's four U.S. auto plants. On its assembly line, workers lounged uninterestedly amid the sheet metal, amused themselves with such pranks as exploding firecrackers with their welding torches. A few regularly drank on the job, putting away so much of Milwaukee's famous beer that on occasion they tried to turn out eight-door Ramblers. As the shenanigans mounted, body shipments to A.M.C.'s hard-working final assembly plant at Kenosha, Wis., dwindled—so much so that in recent weeks A.M.C. President George Romney began to fear for his dream of selling a record million cars in 1962.

Fortnight ago, the outraged Romney could stand no more. Like a football coach behind by two touchdowns at halftime, he stormed up before several hundred Milwaukee workers waving a fistful of unfilled Rambler orders and threatening "a Milwaukee tragedy" if production did not improve fast. "Our 1962 opportunity is collapsing because we can't get bodies built here," he raged. Most of his audience (who disapprove the antics of the few) applauded, but the offending workers, who had heard the same lecture from local executives, just snickered.

Last week the snickers—and the horse play—abruptly stopped. On orders from Romney, A.M.C. Milwaukee officials fired a supervisor for being drunk on the job and suspended four other workers for buying and selling liquor in the plant. A.M.C. made it clear, too, that more heads would roll if the workers still failed to get the message. But so far, Romney's toughness has elicited nothing but cheers in Milwaukee. "Romney," noted the Milwaukee Journal, "is not asking for anything unreasonable. He wants results, and if he can't get them here he will look elsewhere . . . Were the company to close the plant, 9,000 workers would be out of jobs." More encouraging yet was the absence of any protest from President Roy Speth of the United Auto Workers' Milwaukee local. Said Speth: "I don't think 95% of our union will object to any penalty being applied to anyone selling liquor or drinking on the job."