MTFCA Forum

On Jan. 5, 1914, Henry Ford raised the minimum wage for his factory workers to $5 per day.

What amount of time was considered a work day at that time. I’ve wondered about that but never researched it. But it was considered a pretty good wage at the time.

He cut the standard work day to eight hours.
When I googled it I got: 55 hours per week. To keep up with demand for military equipment, some workers even clocked in a massive 72 hours of work! However, productivity dropped!
Also: ...but also doubled their worker's pay in the process. To the shock of many industries, this resulted in Ford's productivity off of these same workers, but with fewer hours, actually increasing significantly and Ford's profit margins doubled within two years. This encouraged other companies to adopt the shorter, eight hour work day as a standard for their employees.

Good information Rich
I can imagine the workers liked the better wages with the more normalized hrs! Doing a repetitive task over and over would eventually get to the point of making mistakes.

I’ll bet that workers looked forward to another section or department to do something else if it was possible to be able to do that. In a way that would be a welcome break to do another type of routine. Interesting history!

It is difficult to find what the average hourly
wage was for a skilled laborer.

This link tells you the average annual salary
and compared what goods cost:

@ https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e_prices1.htm



FJ

In those days money was worth it's weight in Gold. Thanks to FDR that ended nationally, and then RMN ended it internationally, and the dollar has slipped in value ever since.
Norm

paulmikeska wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 05, 2022 4:14 pm

On Jan. 5, 1914, Henry Ford raised the minimum wage for his factory workers to $5 per day.

Announced on the 5th & put into practice on the 12th... says my "Ford Historian Expert" friend.

Lot more to it than just getting the extra in the pay packet, the workers had to conform to the rules Henry set in working and his idea of life style and if you did then the extra was paid at the end of the year. So the story go's???

Kerry wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 06, 2022 3:18 pm

Lot more to it than just getting the extra in the pay packet, the workers had to conform to the rules Henry set in working and his idea of life style and if you did then the extra was paid at the end of the year. So the story go's???

Quoted from The Henry Ford;


"Those who did have jobs at Ford soon discovered that there were even more conditions. Lost in the headlines was the fact that the pay increase was not a raise per se, it was a profit sharing plan. If you made $2.30 a day under the old pay schedule, for example, you still made that wage under the Five-Dollar plan. But if you met all of the company’s requirements, Ford gave you a bonus of $2.70.

Part of Henry Ford’s reasoning behind the Five-Dollar Day was that workers who were troubled by money problems at home would be distracted on the job. If higher pay was intended to eliminate these problems, then Ford would make sure that his employees were using his largesse “properly.” The company established a Sociological Department to monitor its employees’ habits beyond the workplace (In 1915 it cost Ford $18,000 to operate the sociological department).

To qualify for the pay increase, workers had to abstain from alcohol, not physically abuse their families, not take in boarders, keep their homes clean, and contribute regularly to a savings account. Moral righteousness and prudent saving were all well and good, but they were not generally an employer’s business—at least not outside of working hours. In contrast, Ford Motor Company inspectors came to workers’ homes, asked probing questions, and observed general living conditions. Women were not eligible for the bonus unless they were single and supporting the family. Also, men were not eligible if their wives worked outside the home. If “violations” were discovered, the inspectors offered advice and pointed the families to resources offered through the company. Not until these problems were corrected did the employee receive his full bonus.

What if a worker didn't cooperate with the sociological department or didn't meet the standards? He would only receive the regular wage ($2.30), and he was given six months to comply with the departments standards for living. If he did not meet the standards after six months, then he was fired.

Modifying manufacturing methods was one thing. Modifying the people who carried out those methods was quite another. Henry Ford and his supporters may well have seen the Sociological Department as a benevolent tool to benefit his employees, but the workers came to resent the intrusion into their personal lives. Ford himself eventually realized that the Sociological Department was unsustainable. By 1921, it was largely dissolved."

Ford advertised and the media reported the "$5a day wage" Thousands of job seekers turned up at Ford Company doors. The Ford Co. had the pick of the best candidates.

The Ford Co. did more than visit the homes of the workers and set rules at work. Ford also built homes and sold them at a reasonable price. Ford had training job schools, a Hospital for Ford employees and more. If a worker toed the line, there many benefits.

The five dollar day was an attempt to hold onto trained workers plain and simple and you had to bend over backwards and kiss Henry’s tail to get it. I don’t buy HF’s bloviating mostly because he probably didn’t say it himself. The 8 hour day instead of 10? Simple. 3 8 hour shifts keep the factory going 24 hours a day without any 4 hour layover. Probably not his idea either.

My childhood neighbor work at the Ford plant in Detroit prior to WW1. He joined the navy and never returned to Ford after the war. He said it just wasn't worth it. The navy trained him in electrical engineering at Harvard and he worked in that field for a while.

Art Mirtes