Wow! I thought this was an un-credited cite, but not!
This story is remarkably similar: By Louis Uchitelle, AlterNet. Posted April 7, 2006. Excerpted from "The Disposable American" by Louis Uchitelle: Several years ago, Donald W. Davis stopped making visits back to New Britain, Conn. He felt shame for what had happened to the Stanley Works, the city's largest employer, which he had led from 1966 to 1988 -- from its best days to the beginning of the layoffs and plant closings that, after he was gone, finally reduced Stanley's presence in New Britain to a collection of mostly empty factory buildings and reproachful former workers. Davis by then no longer lived in New Britain. He had sold his Dutch Colonial home, which he had painted a bright and optimistic yellow, and had moved with his wife to Martha's Vineyard, where their summer house on seven acres of rolling lawn became their main residence. It was an entirely different setting, but the trip back to New Britain for visits was easy enough -- less than four hours by ferry and car -- and Davis at first made it often. Like many chief executives of his era, he had been deeply involved in the life of the city that, in his day, had supplied thousands of Stanley's workers. He had served on the board of education for many years and was its president for a while. The six Davis children attended the public elementary schools. http://www.alternet.org/workplace/34015/ <...> At least someone is making money off of the destruction of Stanley Tool, a company I worked for as a machine operator during the early 70s in Vermont, in the midst of Stanley's corporate disintegration. I remembered asking myself what garage door openers had to do with tools. The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism by John C. Bogle Yale University Press,260 pp., $16.00 (paper) 1. Donald Davis was not concerned about imports in the late 1960s, when he started out as CEO of the Stanley Works, the country's leading manufacturer of hand tools. By the early 1980s, the challenge of competing against inexpensive tools made in Taiwan, Korea, and China had swept most of Davis's other concerns aside. His first response was a plan to streamline management, reducing the company's white-collar ranks through attrition. An old-school CEO who had been with Stanley most of his adult life, Davis considered layoffs a last resort. But by the time he stepped down as CEO in 1987, hundreds of factory workers had lost their jobs on his orders. His successor, Richard Ayers, had the advantage of knowing what he was in for. An industrial engineer by training, Ayers mapped out On 5/26/07, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
NY Review, Volume 54, Number 10 ยท June 14, 2007 The Specter Haunting Your Office By James Lardner
