RELATIONS OF FOREMAN AND EMPLOYMENT

A

MANAGER

BY CHARLES E. FOUHY

NY ONE who has studied the subject of the relations between the employment manager and the foremen is bound to recognize the fact that harmonious relations are a necessary factor for the successful operation of the functions of employment management.

The leading business men of the country are alive to the transitory period confronting industrial managers. The relations between the management and the workers are drawing them closer together. The workmen, however, do not as a whole realize that this change has come about and is here to stay.

We have had various stages of development in the industrial world in the past, but to-day is the age of closer human relations and the recognition of the potentiality of the worker.

If this statement is true then we cannot evolve any new scheme for handling industrial relations by operating our plants along antiquated lines. This work requires a broader conception of the human side of the problems that are constantly coming to the attention of the managers of big industries. It is impossible for them to give all these matters their personal attention so they have delegated this work to an executive, the employment manager, who is their special representative with authority to handle the details judiciously on the basis of fair dealing for the management, superintendents, foremen, and workers.

The recognition in industry of the need of employment managers has placed the work on an equal footing with the financial and manufacturing departments.

In other words, the management now looks to the employment manager to standardize the labor forces in the same man

ner the manufacturing departments are expected to turn out a finished product which will mean increased sales and greater prosperity for the company.

Most employers to-day want to maintain a happy, contented, and satisfied working force and are doing unusual things such as group insurance, stock and profit sharing, shop committees and employees' social activities, all for the purpose of trying to impress upon the workers the fact that their interest in the workers does not begin and end in the production reports.

SECURING COÖPERATION OF EXECUTIVES

The hardest task the employment manager has to contend with is the winning of the coöperation of the shop and office executives. No employment manager regardless of the weight of authority vested in his office will ever accomplish the results desired by attempting to force the shop and office executives to surrender prerogatives they have long considered theirs by inheritance.

The successful employment manager will launch a campaign of education and endeavor to convince these men that he is not trying to take away any of their rights but is simply relieving them of some of the burdens they have been carrying, which will give them more time to work out shop and production problems.

If you force a foreman to give up something he has always considered his natural rights you are never going to gain his coöperation and whole-souled support. But if you succeed in making him think he is of his own accord giving you a part of his duties then you may depend upon his taking a keen interest in what you are doing for him.

No foreman or superintendent likes to have it appear he has been forced to relinquish any part of his authority. He will fight the issue openly at first and if he is over-ruled he will endeavor to, in every way possible, place pitfalls in the path of the employment manager.

It is a problem at first of psychology, salesmanship, personality, and perseverance that will eventually muster the united forces of the shop and office executives behind the employment

department, and make it possible to do constructive work that means better human relations.

Coincidently if the employment and other branches of industry are not coördinating harmoniously because one thinks the other is poaching upon their preserves, how will it ever be possible to expect the rank and file to become imbued with the spirit of tolerance and coöperation which should tend to bring about a better understanding of the purpose of the management to make the working and social relations intimate and confidential?

At the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Corporation, the hiring, rating, placing, supervision of transfer, and final discharge was invested in the employment manager.

Before this was established we found the foremen hired help in such a haphazard manner that there was little or no record taken of the men hired or discharged, nor any information concerning their past history. The foremen simply would let it be known in their departments that they wanted more help and the men would bring in some of their friends, and invariably the foremen would never question them beyond asking the name and address and often not even that.

We had some of the very best production foremen in the country but they were very poor judges of applicants for work.

Naturally, when we started to take over the entire hiring machinery the usual argument was made that the foreman was the one most vitally concerned in the operation of his department and he should have the right to say who shall and shall not work in his department.

It required considerable missionary work and a certain amount of force to convince the foremen that the proper place to hire, rate, and discharge men was in the employment department.

Oftentimes in the beginning the foremen would decline to accept the men hired without even giving them the opportunity of demonstrating whether they were qualified or not.

In such cases we simply brought a little pressure to bear on the foremen by calling the matter to the attention of the super

intendent or works manager as need be and insisted the men be put to work and then if they were not qualified it was up to the employment manager.

The statement has been often made that no employment manager is competent to pass upon the qualifications of applicants for positions in all departments such as the financial, manufacturing, and the multiplicity of special requirements peculiar to every manufacturing concern.

It is doubtful if any employment manager now holding a responsible position is skilled in every occupation for which he hires. It would be impossible to find such a combination in any one man regardless of his training and education, but if he has had the practical experience of dealing with human nature and applying it to industry, he does not need to be experienced in all trades and occupations to hire any class of labor successfully.

I do not think it is overstating it in the least to say that the average foreman is not as well qualified to pass upon applicants for employment as the employment manager.

Frequently some employment managers prefer to have the foremen pass upon the applicants because if perchance the man does not prove satisfactory they can dodge the issue by saying, it is not their fault, the foreman did the hiring.

It is my contention that if the employment manager does not have the right to all the employment functions, among which the hiring, discharge, and adjusting of grievances are a part, then he is not an employment manager but simply an employment clerk, and if he is paid over $25 per week he is taking money under false pretences.

When the question of foremen doing the final interviewing and hiring is considered I might ask the question, how many foremen now have the absolute right of hiring and discharge? Except in a very small shop the superintendent is the one who invariably does the hiring and sends the workman to the foreman, and he has no choice but to take the man and give him a chance to prove his ability. If the man does not measure up to the shop standards of workmanship, what does he do? Why, he merely calls the superintendent's attention to the fact and he

is told to either transfer him to some other department or let

him go.

There are exceptions to this procedure, to be sure, and I have in mind a large western New York plant employing from 8,000 to 10,000 persons where the foremen interviews and hires all help for their respective departments. When the employment manager finds an applicant who measures up to the job requirements he calls a messenger who escorts the man to the foreman. It is often necessary to go through several divisions before he arrives at the right department and the strange man going through the plant distracts the attention of the other workmen. The foreman is usually busy at other work and the man is required to wait around until he is at liberty to see him. In the meantime, the man is restless and forms unsatisfactory opinions of the system, which makes it necessary for him to wait an unreasonable length of time to be told whether he is hired or not.

The interesting part, however, is that in almost 90 cases out of 100 the men sent to the foremen are hired.

After the man leaves the foreman he must be escorted back to the employment department and if he is hired is given a temporary pass for the following morning, all of which means a double handling of every man hired.

Why waste all that time when it might just as well be done in the employment department in the first place and save all the extra hiring expense that is involved?

Recently I had a discussion with the superintendent of a large western Massachusetts manufacturing plant on the relations between the employment manager and the foremen and the following are some of his contentions:

1. The employment manager has no business mixing into shop matters that affect the relations between the foremen and the workmen.

2. The foreman is the logical medium to settle any and all disputes in his department.

3. We are starting at the wrong end to adjust industrial relations by bringing in the employment manager.

4. The foremen should be trained to handle their men in