BATA SYSTEM PLANT IN MARYLAND IS SAID TO USE FOREIGN SPEEDUP; PROBE ASKED
Bata System Plant In Maryland Is Said To Use Foreign Speedup; Probe Asked Shoe Co. Is Object of Wage-Hour Suit by Administrator From the N. Y. Post NEW YORK CITY—Fiction could hardly provide a...
...went from success to success...
...Best of all, from Bata's point of view, they accepted without question his greatest "improvement" ever American factory organization, the piece-work system whereby each unit of work was made responsible for the speed of production and the quality of product...
...Maurice Hindus, the novelist, in "We Shall Live Again," describes a meeting with two of the older workers...
...This is only proper...
...He was so impressed that he returned to his native country and founded a town—called Zlin, the nearest Czech pronunciation of the name of Massachusetts original...
...Is Object of Wage-Hour Suit by Administrator From the N. Y. Post NEW YORK CITY—Fiction could hardly provide a more interesting story than that of the establishment of the Bata Shoe Co...
...They easily flowed into the mould of the new industrial enterprise, came to live in the company barracks, submitted to company training, complied with company discipline...
...He drew his workers from the Czechoslovak countryside...
...Congress ought to find out...
...He writes: "She was content enough in ZHn but her husband grumbled...
...There he saw American mass production methods...
...Plant In Maryland Now, years afterward...
...Untroubled by union labor, the company was able to produce shoes so cheap that American shoe manufacturers could hardly compete, even with tariff p»otertion...
...They were peasant youngsters, reared in the Austrian feudal system...
...He started from scratch as far as labor was concerned...
...The work was arduous...
...Despite the fact that thousands of trained American shoe-workers are unemployed, the majority of the Bata employes have been obtained from among the 16-to-18-year-olds of the locality...
...plant at Belcamp, Md...
...When they had saved some money they would go back to the country and get a place of their own and never look again at a factory...
...The Wages and Hours admiinstrator has brought suit against the Bata Shoe Co...
...It is possible, however, that our present laws contain loopholes which permit anti-social practices, fmmon aborad but rare here...
...But Jan Bata's adaptation of the American system produced something new...
...Bata has set up a plant in the Maryland countryside...
...It begins more than a decade ago when Jan Bata, already a successful entrepreneur In Czecho Slovakia, visited the shoe factories of Lynn, Mass...
...They are being trained by Czechoslovak instructors to work the German machines (little, if any, different from American ones) and are being regimented in the Bata system...
...It sapped a lot of strength out of him...
...to enforce payment of the minimum wage required by law...
...Foreign firms should be made to live up to American standards if they wish to do business here...
...A first step should be adoption of the Connery resolution for an investieation of the Bata system...
...Meanwhile, the Bata Shoe Co...
Vol. 10 • April 1940 • No. 15
