Henry Ford was not only A bold businessman which founded an automobile empire, was also the cornerstone that Revolutionized cars manufacturing and a strategist of the economy. For this reason, it is not strange that Jim Farley, the current CEO of Ford, found in the founder of his company the inspiration to solve a serious labor problem.
As Farley himself told during An interview With the writer Walter Isaacson, Biographer of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, who during the 2019 union negotiationshe visited some brand factories to directly ask his employees. The CEO confessed to Isaacson that the most veteran told him: “Young people do not want to work here. Jim, you pay 17 dollars an hour, and they are very stressed.”
As Farley explained during their interview, the workers told their boss that the new workers, most of them temporary workers, worked for eight hours at Amazon or other works, and then making their turn in Ford sleeping just three or four hours to be able to come to the end of the month due to precarious salaries.
A decision inspired in 1914
The Ford template was in a complicated situation since the low wages were moving the youngest, who preferred other ways to obtain a sufficient salary to livewhile the average age of Ford’s fixed personnel was increasing and the vacancies that were leaving They were not covered.
In this critical context, Farley decided to pull internal newspaper library and look at what Henry Ford himself did more than a century earlier.
The legendary founder of Ford doubled in 1914 the daily salary of the operators at $ 5 per day, much more than average at that time. Ford did not upload the salaries of its employees for a sudden goodnessbut with a very clear logic: “I do this because I want my factory workers to buy my cars. If they earn enough money, they will buy my own product,” Henry Ford confessed.
According to Farley, applying this measure “was not easy. It was expensive. But I think that is the type of changes we need to implement in our country.” As a result, the company made temporary workers full timewhich allowed them to access higher wages, participation in profits and better medical coverage. In addition, temporary workers managed to reduce the time they should be working for Ford before opting for fixed job.
The objective of the measure implemented by the current CEO of Ford is exactly the same as Henry Ford’s in 1914: ensure a stable, well formed template and be able to retain the best talent to improve the productivity of its assembly lines.
Not only is money, it’s also training
Despite the salary improvements that were signed in Ford, Farley was convinced of the need to have a good professional education for young people. According to published Fortunein the next decade about four million operators will be needed for the manufacturing industry as the current operators are retired.
This scenario is not exclusive to the US. In Spain the demand for qualified labor He shoots In sectors like construction or the renewable energies And there is not even enough young people to cover itnor have they necessary training.
“In Germany, all the operators of our factories have an apprentice from high school and each position requires about eight years of practical training,” said Farley, who was convinced that this model ensures the generational relief and quality of the staff.
Images | FordUnspash (THISISENGINEING)
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