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He signed into effect the first 40-hour agreement in the area with Doug Peach, and offered such advanced amenities for the time as company cafeterias, recreation fields and medical clinics. "His desire to help people almost got out of hand in the end," says a Rubery Owen executive. "He wanted to own people, like Krupp."
Sir Alfred is also remembered as the man who, in the opinion of the shop floor, exhausted the assets of the Darlaston factory to invest elsewhere, leaving both men and machines in poor shape to deal with the more streamlined industrial competition from Europe. That is part of the reason, says Peach, why "the unions have now got the loyalty that Sir Alfred once had."
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John Owen's long days, rumpled suits, even his love of fast cars, are all reminiscent of his father. What he lacks is Sir Alfred's ease on the shop floor.
At noon, Owen leaves the upstairs canteen that is used by company officers−a large, spare uninviting room with curtainless windows, bare walls and a small central cluster of tables flanked by molded plastic chairs. He heads downstairs to the lower canteen, a far livelier place, where he is to have his picture taken while handing out first-aid certificates to a group of apprentices. The photographer poses Owen this way and that, trying to make him look comfortable among the long wooden benches packed with men who are loudly joking their way through hearty 500 meals. A few workers look over their shoulders. Then they quickly turn back to their plates, not out of any apparent dislike or indifference but with the embarrassment of proud men who do not want to seem too visibly interested in a visiting celebrity. Later, at a gathering of pensioners, Owen is introduced to say a brief word. "Certainly a brief word," he says. "I wouldn't want to keep you from your pork pies."
The awkward and pained formality is not regarded as personal inadequacy, but as the inevitable consequence of the distance that has grown between workers and management. Owen averages a "complete walk-around" of the plant once a month, and says that he knows some 400 or 500 of his 3,000 employees. Most of his time is spent within his narrow, paneled suite, its subdued interior of light grays and white comfortably sealed off from the din outside. Owen works so intently and noiselessly that his secretary sometimes checks through the open door to see whether he is there. "To be able to lead here in a more personal way would be more gratifying," says Owen, "but the rules of the game are different. I have to deal with the union rather than the employee. The employees become the faceless ones."
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Doug Peach does not feel that the union movement has made him faceless: "Fifteen years ago, I was crying out to be accepted as a human being instead of a clock number. But there has been quite a change. I cannot see anything I am crying out for so desperately now. I don't really want to change my life at all."
By the time the 4 o'clock whistle blows across the plant, Doug Peach is already out of the