BRITAIN/SPECIAL REPORT: UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS AT THE FACTORY

(4 of 11)

ten supervisors who were working in his department several years ago remain; the others suffered physical or mental breakdowns. "They slowly crack," the manager continues. "Eventually, enough is enough."

∙

Welding sparks fly behind the rows of green tarpaulin stalls in the blackened work barns. The ventilation in one building comes from flaps in the steel skin that are braced with odd pieces of wood. The interiors of most departments are dimly lit and cavernous. "Sophisticated equipment wouldn't necessarily go well here," says a senior executive. "Black-country laborers [so named because of the region's soot-grimed landscape] prefer physical effort, and if they're dirty, sweating and completely knocked out at the end of the day, they feel satisfied."

Not Doug Peach. He thinks that Rubery Owen employees might be more interested in producing if they were not trapped among the depressing relics of wartime plant and machinery. Says Peach: "I was sure that I would have liked to have been a loser in the last war when I went to Volkswagen for four days in Germany and saw the batteries of machinery the U.S. had given them.* I could look along and see presses as far as I could see at Volkswagen; and when I look at Rubery Owen, I think if there is anything that didn't go on the ark, we have got it. Only once did anyone bother to try and fix up Darlaston. That was in 1960, when Princess Margaret visited Rubery Owen. The factory had such a face-lift as we couldn't recognize it. Wherever they decided she was going to go, the paint went on. I think they must've touched up the clouds. Looks as if we got to get some other monarch down here before it has another bit of paint on it."

∙

Two men with clipboards and tablets walk into the gas tanks department. Within minutes, a hand signal is given by the shop steward. The workers stop and line up against the wall until the interlopers can be identified. They prove to be not inspectors but sewerage contractors, and the machines start up again.

"We're not producing as much as we used to," says one senior manager. "For reasons we can't explain, they've lost interest in working." Whether the decline in production is the fault of the men or their outmoded machines is, in most instances, almost impossible to tell. In either case, the effect is the same. In one department, a manager recently took a rare check of all his assembly lines on an average day. The results:

Line 1: 8-8:20, running 8:20-8:40, quality fault 8:40-9:15, running 9:15-2, mechanical failure 2-3:45, no crew available 3:45-4:30, running Total workday: 100 minutes

Line 2 was not available for operation at all because of faults in a new tooling operation. On the department's other three lines, operations were interrupted by mechanical and electrical breakdowns and two 90-minute union dispute meetings.

∙

In 1970 John Owen and his brother David, 38, who directs all the Rubery Owen operations outside of Darlaston, took control of the company. Shortly after that, "Mr. John and Mr. David," as Doug Peach refers to them, commissioned a behavioral study from an industrial-consulting firm. The consultants concluded that the company seemed more involved in labor relations than in producing