BOOK REVIEW: A SAVAGE FACTORY
This article is from our archives and has not been updated and integrated with our "new" site yet... Even so, it's still awesome - so keep reading!
Published on Sat, Nov 14, 2009
By: The LACar Editorial Staff
A SAVAGE FACTORY
Review by Harold Osmer
Author
Robert Dewar worked for Ford in the 1970s after a stint at Proctor & Gamble and
many years of business school training. He walked away six years later appalled
at what he experienced. Some 25 years later, he dug out his old notes and
compiled A Savage Factory as a chronicle of his time on the factory floor.
This book draws you right in and will hold your interest. Dewar's writing style
attests to this being a self-published effort. That is also where the strength
of his arguments are made. He makes no effort at offering facts and figures.
Rather, he relies on his own first-hand accounting of what he directly witnessed
at Ford's Sharonville, Ohio transmission plant. You can draw your own
conclusions.
A Savage Factory is replete with graphic stories confirming his disbelief at the
manner in which Ford management and the United Auto Worker's labor union warred
with one another over seemingly common production goals. While management
operated as though workers were only there to cause trouble, workers operated to
the letter of the contract and could/would go so far as sabotage to prove their
power. Neither side, in Dewar's accounting, was capable or willing to concede
anything to the other.
The dehumanizing effects of repetitive assembly line work were counteracted by
high wages. Management sought only to maximize output, again with high wages to
compensate for driving men to the loony bin. All at the further expense of
declining production quality.
The author never gives us a calendar frame of reference for his experience. He
dives right in with his first gruesome day and the game is on. A better setting
of the historical stage would have helped.
Dewar's tale comes from the Ford factory floor, but he alludes to hearing
similar stories from managers at GM and Chrysler. The classic management versus
labor battle was eventually won by superior quality imports from Japan and
Germany. In so many words, the American auto industry didn't lose market share,
they gave it away through complacency, arrogance, and worn out corporate/labor
policy.
A Savage Factory is an engaging, quick read that raised my blood pressure a time
or two along the way. Congratulations to Robert Dewar for making it out alive,
having the wits to keep copious notes, and completing a worthwhile book.
- Harold O.
To order the book on Amazon, click
here.
