Henry Ford said, "There is but one rule for the industrialist and that is:
Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible."
How different it is today when the corporate mantra is to pay the employee as little as possible regardless of the profits made by the company.
Trouble is that high wages and low costs are many times at odds.
Further, studies done on motivators and de-motivators in the workplace show that neither quality nor productivity are consistently linked with pay levels.
For instance if your $25/hr worker produces 300 widgets in an hour while two $10/hr workers produce 100 each... the obvious answer is to hire the higher paid worker.
But often just the opposite is true.
For instance in my last company, Mexican immigrant workers making $6.50 produced better quality at a higher productivity than $9.00 American workers.
Ford's quote is certainly NOT a universal truth.
In fact, it isn't even a general truth.
At best, it is a noble goal... perhaps even naive since the competition is very unlikely to let you get away with it.
Lost labor costs seldom have a great deal to do with profit over the long haul... it has to do with survival.
Spoken like a true capitalist, and a Christian one at that!
Let me ask you a question Scott.
Do you think a company, especially a company that is operated by Christians has a responsibility to pay its employees a decent, fair, living wage?
Wage should be between the two parties involved. It isn't the governments job to interfere with that.
Minimum wage is so low that it gives many companies a pathetic benchmark for what to pay.
Just another element of socialism.
Compare SAFECO and PEMCO insurance. Both Founded in Seattle. Both have almost identical products. Why hasn't Pemco - a mutual (co-op) run Safeco out of business? Credit unions have the same products as savings banks. Why do savings banks exist?
Moreover, it is between the christian, and God. Christian workers would submit, and be happy they have jobs.
A christian business owner should pay what the Holy Spirit leads him to pay, and not let anything get between, including his heart. As christians, we are to be good stewards with our gifts. Good stewards don't pay their workers more than they are worth.
And you must not be thinking! Henry Ford was the most famous of Hitler's foreign backers, and he was rewarded in the 1930s for this long-lasting support with the highest Nazi decoration for foreigners.
Nope. You are wrong on this one. Henry Ford recieved the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. The highest nazi award for non-Germans. Look it up. He also thought Mein Kampf should be required high school reading.
I guess he thought people should be paid a fair wage, as long as they ain't Joos.
You are correct, Bro. Curtis. Henry Ford began publishing The International Jew in 1920, which was one of the most infamous anti-Semitic rags ever printed.
I think he has some competition for that position:
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.