Transcript

Location: 1401 St. Andrews St.

Karl Schaettle: Oh, it was at the time that we, um, mechanized our plant back in ‘40, ‘41. Prior to that time shoe-making was all handwork and after that, we had elliptical productive units with about twenty-eight people on them, and they would turn out variously depending on the operation, uh, up to a thousand I guess. In some instances, up to as high as fourteen-hundred pairs a day on a unit. 

Howard Fredricks (interviewer): And that compared with how many by hand?

Schaettle: Oh, I don’t know, but there was a tremendous savings because, uh, in recent years as it were in those days, there were twelve hundred people and we’d turn out the same production with eight-hundred people. And I mean eight-hundred total employees—salesmen and office and all, so, uh, there was a vast difference there. I would say about a third difference.

Fredricks: The workers did not like piecework, or did they?

Schaettle: They liked it. From the standpoint of increasing their pay. If you set fair rates on the piecework you get very little flak or fallout. It’s when firms try to chisel on their employees and not give them a fair rate that there has been a lot of flak and fallout from piecework. We had quite a controversy up there some years ago with the workers claiming that these, uh, piecework rates were not justifiably set. They, uh—they had their own time and motion study man come in and go all through our rates structure and check it. They didn’t find a single instance where there was anything wrong with the rates. And, uh, that settled that. So the local union had to pay this man to do that. And, um, it was a union man who took the same courses that our people did, probably in the same classes with him, so it was very easy for him to check that out.