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Celebrate 100th anniversary of Henry Ford’s $5 a day wage by raising wages

Edward Lambert | December 5, 2013 12:43 pm

US/Global Economics

ford in office

The middle-class came to life in January, 1914, when Henry Ford doubled wages to $5 a day. The message changed the economy for the better.

100 years later, we can do it again!

Comments (2) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
2 Comments
  • William Ryan says:
    November 14, 2015 at 10:13 am

    Hi Ed to me this was just the very beginnings of Lean thinking by Mr. Ford. If we look a bit later the core principles of Lean and TPS includes respect. The five core principles are Respect, Teamwork, Gemba, Kaizen, and Challenge. So in essence the pay raise that Ford gave was an earlier version of respect-reward in so that employees would now be able to afford to purchase their own products made and to have a higher standard of living as an employee. This did prove to become a very successful economic model of the time as the pay back to Mr. Ford’s company from his investment was a lifetime commitment of dedicated quality and service from many of those employees. I also believe that the idea and concept spread to many other companies soon after rising the tide of wages and living standards through out the economy for years to come…A similar situation occurred when the next Mr. Ford 2nd finally gave into the UAW as a bargaining agent for the workers shortly after WWII…IMHO.

    • Edward Lambert says:
      November 14, 2015 at 1:13 pm

      Willima,
      Yep… Your term Lean is perfectly used.

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