Kaiser Steel Gets Back To Business

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29051, 13 November 1959, Page 3

Kaiser Steel Gets Back To Business

[From PETER MICHELMORE, in New York]

Henry and Edgar Kaiser, the father and son partnership who boss an industrial empire ’ stretching from Australia to Africa, watched their steel mills rumble back into production this week with a knowing twinkle in their eyes.

Their famous go-it-alone approach to industry had again fused criticism, but it had also brought results. Last week, with the American steel strike well into its fourth month and still hopelessly deadlocked, greying, 51-year-old Edgar Kaiser, who heads Kaiser Steel, made a spearate deal with the steelworkers’ union president, David McDonald.

The two men signed a 20-month pact calling for higher wages and fringe benefits and Kaiser steel was back in business again. There was a roar of indignation and cries of “inflation” from America’s top steel companies, which have pledged themselves to stopping the wage-price spiral in the steel industry. Their Trademark

But Edgar and his 77-year-old father Henry, the founder of the Kaiser Industrial giant, were unmoved. The individual approach has become their trademark and it has helped build a combine worth an estimated 1700 million dollars.

The companies’ make steel, aluminium, cement, chemicals, ships, household appliances, hotels, houses and automobiles.

Henry is now devoting most of his time to erecting a paradise of 50,000 homes and several hotels in Honolulu.

“It doesn’t come from a desire to do something different,” Edgar Kaiser explained of the family’s business methods. “There is honestly no thinking in that direction. It’s a question of having a problem and starting from the beginning to find an original solution. “For example, when we had to build Liberty ships during World War 11, we asked ourselves, ‘How do you Build ships quickest?’ ”

The Kaisers found that the biggest handicap to speedy production was a cramped shipyard, having to stack and unstack every time something was needed. They laid out their shipyards over great expanses of space so that supplies were available immediately. At the peak of their production, they turned out a Liberty ship in the incredible time of four and one-half days. Good Labour Relations

Edgar Kaiser makes no excuse for his solo steel strike settlement. Good labour relations, he says, mean better production from each individual worker.

The kaiser companies have among the lowest production costs in the steel, aluminium and cement industries. Their employees are covered by a unique “permanent health plan,” financeji by the Kaiser Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the industrial empire. r The foundation has set up a string of ultra modern hospitals in contracted with doctors to work a regular eight-hour day and offered complete medical hospital coverage for practically nothing. I This project incurred the disapproval of the American Medical Association, but it made a lot of Kaiser employees happy. Henry Kaiser set the standard for dynamic corporate approach in 1927, when, as a comparatively small-time construction engineer, he under-bid all competitors to ?et the coveted contract to supply -ement for a giant dam construction. He did not even have a cement olant then, but with the contract n his brief-case, he soon raised ?ndugh capital to build one and ’ulfil his contract. . Small Car Failed

One of the few failures in Kaiser history happened 10 years ago when the ■ automobile branch rt the combine tried to introduce i small car to the American market. It flopped miserably, but the Willys Division went on to become i major automotive power overseas. Kaiser produces more cars through the division in Brazil than any other car manufacturer. Edgar Kaiser has been “trotting around” to his father’s construction jobs since he was 10. His life now is tied up on a 24-hour basis with the multiple businesses he directs, either from the corporation’s headquarters in Oakland, California, or from its Park Avenue offices in New York. He married Australian-born Sue Mead 27 years ago and the couple have six children. One of them, 26-year-old Carlyn is now at the construction camp of Australia’s Snowy Mountains hydroelectric project with her engineer ausband Raymond Wehle. 14-Car Family

At home in Oakland, Edgar and Sue Kaiser live in a lavish ranch house with a swimming pool, tennis, court and private baseball field 'or the three Kaiser boys. A fleet of 14 luxury cars serves the family. Edgar Kaiser, however, is rarely home. During the last few years he has logged 300,000 miles and visited 20 countries. In the middle of the heated steel negotiations, he hopped a plane in New York one afternoon for Ghana on Africa’s west coast to discuss a business deal. He was’ back in New York day to sign the contract that put the Kaiser mills back in production. Kaiser Associates picture Henry and Edgar as knights who have set out to right wrongs in American industry. The picture is not shared by the other steel industrialists, who were still crouched over-the union bargaining tables this week.—Associated Newspapers Feature Service.