ROY EDROSO

Quite by accident, I recently came across PBS' Back to the Floor series. In each episode, a CEO descends to the lower levels of his or her empire, or one of its outposts, to "spend a week with the workers" while a film crew follows.

The episode I saw features Brian Patterson, a soft-spoken fellow brought in by Waterford-Wedgwood of Great Britain in 1995 as a "ruthless modernizer" (the narrator informs us) of their venerable company, which manufactures both Waterford crystal and Wedgwood china. Patterson spends his televised week in the china plant at Stoke-on-Trent, the one "hardest hit by Patterson's cuts." From the dates given on the program, the episode seems to take place in late 2000 or early 2001.

Among the workers with whom Patterson rubs elbows are china decorator Yvonne and cupmaker Julie. Both are, under the circumstances, amazingly polite to him. ("Few of the factory workers can afford to have the items they manufacture in their homes," chirps PBS' web site. "Talk about alienation from the means of production!") We are shown some of the robots that have taken over various Wedgwood operations from erstwhile human employees. These automatons do not behave well, sometimes violently smashing cups on the floor--very like a day laborer I once witnessed at the Caldor department store chain's Norwalk warehouse, who liked to release pent-up aggressions on the loading dock by destroying televisions and appliances.

This is not the only problem: Molds used to make clocks are also not up to snuff, and Patterson calls on the mold-making chiefs to get that bit sorted straightaway. Patterson also notices (as who could not) "morale" problems among the staff, and takes swift, businesslike, and expected action: He gets the personnel director to devise a "communication" explaining key points of Wedgwood's redundancy policy, and assembles his own focus group of Wedgwood workers to discuss their grievances.

This discussion is "safe," Patterson informs the 20 (all female) attendees. Their observations are mostly about the discouragement they feel working under the threat of replacement by robots. As in Patterson's previous encounters with Yvonne and Julie (Yvonne is among the attendees), I was struck by their civility, and wondered how much of it was due to the famous manners of Britons, and how much was due to a suspicion that the meeting was not quite as "safe" as advertised.

I also noticed that, though he had dealt swiftly with defective molds and employee communications, Patterson had not been shown to address the robots' malfeasance in any practical way. This is partly explained by his comments to the group: "We would be foolish," he says, "and maybe even broke, if we didn't use the technology that's available in the industry." The robots, after all, are an investment, one that may have bugs now but would certainly come up to snuff over time, which could not be said of the humans.

After the meeting, Yvonne expresses satisfaction with Patterson, calling him "a cut above" the other Wedgwood managers.

The PBS web site agrees: "He hasn't been completely swayed by the emotions he's encountered on the shop floor...According to Waterford-Wedgwood's corporate Web site, the company earned record profits in 2000. Patterson retired from his CEO post last year. He remains with Wedgwood as a non-executive director."

A little background is in order:

Josiah Wedgwood, who founded the company under consideration in the 18th century, was a leading figure of the industrial revolution, mechanizing the production of crockery and creating a system of factory discipline which included the first employee time clock. He was pals with James Watt, inventor of the practical steam engine, and they and other engineering and business honorables belonged to a group called the Lunar Society, which met on nights when the moon was full. Wedgwood's system and his china were a spectacular success. When he was named "Potter to the Queen" by Queen Caroline, his sales soared further. When older and infirm, Wedgwood got his friend Erasmus Darwin to help run the company. One of Darwin's sons married one of Wedgwood's daughters, producing the evolutionist Charles Darwin.

Wedgwood's factory near Stoke-on-Trent was called Etruria, after the home of black Etruscan porcelain in Italy. Wedgwood ran Etruria utterly, and even created a little village there for his workers--much as Henry Ford would do in Michigan in the early 20th century. (Ford actually devised many such communities, including one for his black workers which he fancifully named Inkster).

Wedgwood was liberal in politics, supporting the French Revolution and the English Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade. Perhaps inspired by his progressive views (or enraged by the natural exigencies of life in a company town; or both), Wedgwood's Etruria workers rioted in 1783. Wedgwood had to call in the army to suppress them. Addressing his vanquished factota, he urged them to "submit quietly to the will of heaven."

In July 2001, Waterford-Wedgwood announced that 1,400 staff worldwide--14% of its total workforce--were to be laid off. In November of that year, it was reported that "the majority of [the affected] jobs will be in Stoke-on-Trent which is the home of the Wedgwood ceramic business."

Crank Watch has not been able to learn whether Yvonne and Julie were among those affected.