How Did Ford Change The Salary Of Workers

In 1914, Ford changed the salary of all of his employees to $5 a day, almost twice the amount of previous pay in the industry. In theory, this seemed like an incredible turning point for these works, however when you take a closer look it was actually an extensive plan to control every aspect of his workers’ lives. Ford described his intentions as clean, that he was making this decision to better align the values and work goals of the top managers with the other workers. He said the goal was to share in the company’s prosperity at home and make sure their workers are getting a part of the company’s profit. The bonus in the new pay came with costs of requirements enforced by the Sociological Organization, where committees of people would go to the employees’ homes, question, them, know everything about their lifestyles, and determine whether they were Americanized enough to be deserving of the bonus.

Men were not eligible if their wives worked outside the home. To be eligible, workers had to learn English, take classes to learn the “American way,” and act morally according to the committees. In reality the increased pay was done to cut total labor costs by reducing employee turnover. Today we can see that this was ineffective and is no longer a tactic used to increase profit. In some ways, paying workers more can help cut labor costs because it convinces employees to stay and feel better about their work. However, this came at a large cost to Ford because it truly prevented workers from unionizing and working in the environment they