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1 HENRY KAISER’S ORPHANS fter thirty - two years at the Kaiser Aluminum plant in Trentwood, rolling molten metal into usable forms, Dave A Carlson envied his father. Making aluminum is one of the hot- test, hardest, and dirtiest jobs in modern America, but Dave ’ s dad had worked at the same mill before modern technology had made the job just a little easier. So why did Dave think that things had been better for his father? Sitting in his union ’ s storefront offi ce, Carlson explained, “ All my father saw were the good days. ” 1 As with many families in Spokane, a gritty factory town in eastern Washington, there had been little question that he ’ d follow his father into the rolling mill located ten miles beyond the city line. The elder Carlson had gone to work at Trentwood in 1946, shortly after the legendary Henry J. Kaiser hadCOPYRIGHTED founded the company, MATERIAL and he retired in 1976, when Kaiser ’ s heirs were still in control. Dave was hired in 1973, so he worked for a succession of new owners, culminating with the fi nancier Charles Hurwitz, who ended up locking out his own employees and bankrupting the company. Increasingly discontented with the new management, Dave became active in the union, eventually becoming president of Local 338 of the United Steelworkers. 13 cc01.indd01.indd 1133 44/25/08/25/08 22:34:54:34:54 PPMM 14 LOVE THE WORK, HATE THE JOB From 1998 through 2000, negotiations for a new union contract deadlocked, the workers went on strike, and the company refused their offer to return to work. So Carlson took on new roles — bargaining with management, leading picket lines, and making sure that workers got their strike benefi ts. His life became more varied and challenging than his father ’ s, but still he envied the settled world his old man had known, when a benevolent company and a strong union together guaranteed a stable livelihood. “ Everyone enjoyed working for Henry J. Kaiser because he treated you right, ” he said. “ It was a good place to work, great benefi ts, health care, and vacations. ” Kaiser Aluminum’ s history was a parable of how workers could be encouraged to take pride in their work — and how that pride could turn to rage when their company morphed from model employer to corporate cutthroat. Ambitious, hardworking, and attuned to the temper of his times, Henry J. Kaiser began his business career during the conservative 1920s as an unusually demanding boss who drove his employees mercilessly. But when he found that workers were more responsive to respectful treat- ment, he became the prototypical progressive capitalist, practicing and preaching the New Deal doctrine gospel that businesses benefi t from stable and satisfi ed workforces and cooperative relation- ships with unions. During Kaiser Aluminum ’ s heyday, its policies proved that workers could take satisfaction in doing some of the most diffi cult and dangerous blue- collar jobs and could develop a remarkable degree of loyalty to a company that cared about them. When new owners treated their employees as costs to be cut, their loyalty turned into fury. The workers resolved to hold out “ one day longer ” than their employer, even though the strike and the lockout lasted for two years. Burdened with debt, fi nes for labor law violations, and underfunded health and pension plans, Hurwitz lost control of the company, and its new management returned to the founder ’ s vision. By 2005, a slimmed - down Kaiser Aluminum sold specialty products to Boeing and Airbus. Once again, Kaiser Aluminum developed a partnership with the cc01.indd01.indd 1144 44/25/08/25/08 22:34:55:34:55 PPMM HENRY KAISER’S ORPHANS 15 Steelworkers Union, which now selected four of ten members of the company ’ s board of directors. “ The Fabulous Mr. Kaiser” In a society that turns successful CEOs into celebrities, Henry J. Kaiser was as famous during the 1930s and 1940s as Bill Gates, Jack Welch, and Donald Trump are now. But just as today ’ s tycoons personify the practices of the unstable new economy, Kaiser advanced the values of the New Deal. By the time he became a national fi gure, it is impossible to imagine Kaiser having a third of his workforce consist of temporary workers (as Gates did during the 1990s), boasting that he closed down entire divi- sions of his company (as Welch did in his best - selling books), or making his most famous phrase “ You ’ re fi red” (as Trump does on his television series). Instead, Kaiser was known as Franklin D. Roosevelt’ s favorite businessman, the inventor of prepaid health care for workers and their families and child care for their kids, and the advocate for a postwar prosperity built on a secure and growing middle class. Because of Kaiser’ s high - profi le progressivism, the conservative columnist Westbrook Pegler attacked him as being overly depen- dent on government contracts and a “ soft touch ” for the unions. But Kaiser was far from being a softheaded humanitarian. His background and earlier career cast him as a hard - driving Horatio Alger, a self - made businessman whose can - do spirit helped him to found successful companies in industries ranging from photography to construction, shipbuilding, steel, and aluminum. His enlightened employee - relations policies were all the more note- worthy because he began his career as a demanding boss who later learned that satisfi ed workers were more productive than insecure ones. Born in 1882 in the small town of Sprout Brook in upstate New York, Kaiser dropped out of school at the age of twelve to help support his family. Kaiser ’ s father, a German immigrant cc01.indd01.indd 1155 44/25/08/25/08 22:34:55:34:55 PPMM 16 LOVE THE WORK, HATE THE JOB shoemaker, made leather boots by hand, but he was losing business to nearby factories that mass - produced footwear. While Henry J. Kaiser rarely talked about his father, several of his biog- raphers suggested that his determination to be fi rst in his industries was forged by his father ’ s failure to keep up with the times. After leaving school, Kaiser took a job at a dry goods store in Utica, but he soon bought a photography business in Lake Placid and expanded it with branches in vacation spots in Florida, Nassau, and the Bahamas. Then, perhaps following the proverbial advice “ Go west, young man, ” Kaiser moved all the way across the continent to a community with which he would be connected for the rest of his career, Spokane. There, he founded a construction company that did business in the Pacifi c Northwest, California, and Canada. Beginning with state road and bridge projects, he eventually coordinated the construction of major federally funded projects, including the Hoover Dam in Colorado and the Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams in Washington, both of which, decades later, would provide hydroelectric power for the Kaiser Aluminum Company. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Kaiser’ s com- petitive advantage was his determination to complete his projects quickly and inexpensively. Just a few years later, Kaiser would coin quotable sayings about improving working Americans ’ lives, but at fi rst, all of his maxims were about the importance of outworking his competi- tors. To people who doubted that a job could be done, he said, “ I ’ m a builder, and if you call yourself a builder, you ought to be able to build anything, ” To anyone who doubted that the job could be done quickly, he added, “ There ’ s no money in a slow job. ” And to those who still doubted that Kaiser ’ s company could do whatever he set his mind to, he added, “ Problems are simply opportunities in work clothes. ” 2 In order to meet his deadlines and keep within his budgets, Kaiser drove his workers to the edge of exhaustion — and beyond — at a terrible toll in their health and even their lives. During the cc01.indd01.indd 1166 44/25/08/25/08 22:34:55:34:55 PPMM HENRY KAISER’S ORPHANS 17 construction of the Hoover Dam, fourteen men died from the heat in a single day in 1931. Soon afterward, fourteen hundred workers went on strike over unsafe conditions and the simple lack of water. Kaiser fi red them. Although he never apologized for the terrible working conditions on this project, Kaiser did have what he later called “ a trans- formation ” of his attitudes toward workers and their unions. In addition to whatever humane impulses he had, Kaiser had at least three practical reasons to treat workers better. First, his reputation was damaged by the deaths at the Hoover Dam, and the project was delayed by the strike. Second, Kaiser ’ s companies were moving beyond construction to other industries that required stable workforces. And third, as he continued to seek government contracts and other opportunities that depended on the goodwill of public offi cials, pro - labor politicians were taking offi ce, from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to other liberals in state and local governments. Completing projects in remote areas of the Pacifi c Northwest, California, and the Rocky Mountain states, Kaiser and other contractors whom he coordinated found that they could not count on regular supplies of the construction materials that they needed. Always the can - do businessman, Kaiser built several sand and gravel plants of his own and a huge cement plant at Permanente, California. These plants helped him to get contracts to complete more mammoth projects, such as building the piers for the San Francisco Bay Bridge.

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