The Wisconsin Magazine; 704

Work should be a joy. And that's the big difference between Japan and the US is that the average worker in Japan is really fabulously motivated and happy about their work. Worker happiness and worker participation. The keys to increase productivity. We'll have a report on tonight's magazine the Wisconsin Magazine for October 23rd. Reporting from Madison Dave Iverson. Good evening. Welcome to this week's Wisconsin Magazine. A variety of features on tonight's program. We'll have that report on worker productivity later in the half hour. But here's a look at our other features tonight. Our Point of View segment this evening. Two teenagers talking about the need for political involvement. And we'll take you for a ride on old number 201, the main spark of the Chicago Madison and Northern Railway. Our first story tonight a report on a new form of combat in the ring called Tough Man. The old form boxing is sometimes referred to as the manly art of self-defense. What you're about to see has something to do with self-defense little to do with artistry that may or may

not have something to do with manliness. Producer Art Hackett and cinematographer Chuck France went to both La Crosse and Milwaukee to film both the people who participate and the people who watch. Twenty five year old Gerald Holland is a counselor at a home for juveniles yet he entered an ad similar to this one calling on bar bouncers, bar brawlers, lumberjacks, truck drivers, farmers and college students and asking the question, how tough are you? Well I started boxing I started sparing with a friend of mine who works at the same place I work at. He needed somebody to work out with him. I used to play football and I wanted to get in shape. So the best way for me to shape was to work out with him. Then this tournament it just came up in the paper one day and I figured I was just going to be boxing for a short period of time then I would just get into it and see if I can get some money out of it as well. I asked him if I could see his brawling.

And that's what those people are looking for. For blood and just a street fight a little better because they're wearing gloves. Amateur boxing itself or AAU would not identify themselves with the Tough Man competition. You guys were just they weren't really boxers they were just sluggers you know they didn't know how to punch. And I went into it and I kind of practiced. I trained a little bit more for it in the area of boxing more using boxing skills and things like that. The image is that it has, does that kind of bother you participating in that? Yes it bothers me. And that's the most aggravating thing I have about the whole tournament. I don't like that name of the Tough Man competition because I've always been involved with sports at a pretty high level you know. And just the way that people look at it they're going look and see you know who's going to be big, rough, tough and can knock through a wall and stuff like that. And I regard sports at a more high level than that.

These 16 men are about to go through a series of three round bouts in an effort to become the Jearold Holland of Milwaukee. A competition that's been called a circus, barbaric, silly. A competition that is the creation of a man who promoted legitimate boxing. It just seemed that every time that we would have what we considered a good bout the crowd they just didn't like it. You know the guys were in there dancing and weaving and doing their thing and the crowd they was heading out you know they didn't like it. Until you get two big guys that come in they might not have been the best boxers but they had guts and they were in there to win and they were just slugging the crowd was glued to their seats So we thought by golly you know we got to come up with some kind of an idea to promote this kind of a deal and this is how we started. The public seems to be under the standing that this is perhaps a little bit more violent than traditional boxing. Do you think it is? No I don't think it is. I mean look let's face it boxing is a sport.

One man goes in to hurt the other man. That's the name of the game. That's the sport. Number two I don't believe that people who are not trained for a competition like that should enter the competition and who you absolutely have no check on that if somebody says I'm trained well enough you're gonna believe him because you know there's no written statement needed. No that's why we have a referee in the ring. That's why we have very experienced ring officials and corner men which are all professionals to protect these fellas. If a fighter is hurt they'll stop the fight. I mean you might have a busted nose or a busted hand and a lot of blood you know bloody nose so forth but no one's ever been hurt. [Background noise from the ring]

I don't know it was something I always wanted to do it I felt like getting in the ring and once I got in the ring once I just figured I'd give it my best shot. That's just what I did. This is exactly what it is it's a tough man contest. It's not a professional boxing bout, it's a bunch of guys who knock people off of bar stools who fight in neighborhoods and it's a chance for us to all get together and find out who is really the toughest. It appeared early in the contest that this man 25 year old Jeff May was likely to be the toughest of all. May works on the loading dock of a Milwaukee brewery. And in his spare time has gained world ranking in the sport of full contact karate. Doesn't that put him at kind of an advantage in something like this. No, not really. On the contrary he is one of the in fact the first guy that has ever won a Tough Man contest or even came into the money that is involved with karate or kickboxing. Those guys really do not show much of a threat to a puncher or a boxer. But this guy had the ability both ways.

And of course Jeffrey May never had any fights as far as boxing is concerned We've had professional football players hockey players whatever anything. So to answer your question again, no I don't feel that it was unfair at all. I grew up in a very rugged neighborhood where you had to fight when you took your money the store if you didn't hold on to it then you didn't get what you wanted. So I got most of my experience on the street like I said, the karate too helped me as far as conditioning goes. May says he felt naked without his feet. Naked or not he had no trouble polishing off several of his opponents. Only 29 year old Richard Sikorski lasted the full three rounds. May's strongest opponent though was the audience who booed his victories and peppered him with racial epithets. So you weren't exactly the house favorite tonight does that bother you? No not really. Like I said

in my neighborhood I wasn't always the favorite either. But like I said you know this was a rowdy crowd it was a good crowd. I mean these people paid their money to come here to see good fights and if they want a boo or they want to call you something then I think they should have a right to let the steam off because that's what it's all about everybody getting together have a good time. But not everyone had a good time as the two day tournament drew to a close perhaps least of all 19 year old bakery worker Harris Wood of Cudahy and 21 year old bartender Gus Kalopolis [?] of Milwaukee in one of two semifinal matches Wood and Kalopolis fought a fight that was so bloody the winner could fight no more. We're going to find out who the toughest man in Milwaukee is. The fellow that ended up in second place got hurt. The judges awarded

him the decision and so he had to be the runner up and he could not continue. No one wants anyone getting hurt. So it had to be done that way. No I figured I was hurt bad enough and I didn't want to get hurt any more. What happened to you? Well I got hit in the nose quite a few times and then he gave me a shock to the ribs that put me down. I'm not worried about that it's just that if I get hit in the nose again I wouldn't last. Is this sort of injury what you're expecting when you got into this? Well that's they told me the most you can get out of is a broken nose. That's what I got. But do you think the public knows with the expectation of seeing some guy flat on his back. Sure they do. It's the same thing. I think a prime example is when they promoted Evil Knievel to jump over the canyon. No one really wanted to see him get anything just fly over there Canyon the one to see him go down in there. The same thing the automobile race. People like violence. The people who like violence will be gathering in Pontiac Michigan Silverdome this weekend to watch

the national Tough Man finals. Wisconsin's Jearold Holland and Jeff May will be there to try to earn the title Toughest Man in the USA. During this political season much is being said about the apathetic voter but not everyone is apathetic or disgruntled. Our Point of View this week comes from two teenagers who are very much involved in the political process. They don't agree on most issues but they do agree on one thing. Parents and kids should participate in the process. Here's young Democrat Peter Yeo and young Republican Melanie Gumz. I think the reason why my peers and my friends and students are not involved in politics we're not interested in politics which they aren't is because their parents aren't interested or involved in politics. It's I got my views from my parents basically and I've expanded upon those if their parents have don't express their views to their kids then there's no way that the kids are really going to get involved in politics. I think that a lot of parents perhaps are disillusioned with

Watergate disillusioned with the Vietnam War disillusioned with high tax inflation and they just aren't willing to make the effort to get out and get involved in politics and their kids see this and they won't get out and get involved too much either. I think I'm obligated to get involved in politics because I see a lot of problems that are happening with the government in the country today. And if I don't say anything then who's going to? Someone has to express their viewpoint. You just can't sit and complain about something if you aren't getting out there and doing something about it. You have no right to complain. And I guess I fear that if I became politically active that I would have the right to complain. The more people that express their viewpoints the better decisions that are going to be made in our country that are really going to reflect what the people think. I do encourage my friends to become more involved in politics because I think that unless people my age get involved this country is really going to have problems when they get older.

And if you'd like to get involved at least in the Wisconsin Magazine. Send us your Point of View. Write us at 821 University Avenue Madison Wisconsin 5 3 7 0 6. Our next story has something to do with participation and involvement too. But in the factory setting. The term productivity has become the economic catchword of the 1980s. Countries like West Germany, Canada and especially Japan have now surpassed American productivity. But a Wisconsin man UW-extension Professor Gar Stock thinks he knows the answer. Stock has received some national publicity recently for helping to increase the productivity of several Midwestern factories. Gar Stock says what works is worker participation. Connecting management directly to the factory floor. We have a report tonight from Milwaukee and Carol Larson. The machines have not stopped nor have the Americans who run them. But somehow the rush of production that followed the post-war years appears to have slowed. No longer is the

American economy the ever growing unbeatable dynamic force it once was. The productivity of other nations has surpassed the US in rate of production, quality of goods, and the pricing of those goods and services. National comparisons amount to an accusation that the American worker is not working hard enough that a disregard for our jobs is destroying our economy. It is really a crisis of such proportions that I think it threatens the very existence of the free enterprise system as we know it in terms of our country. Professor Gar Stock is a specialist in business and management for the University of Wisconsin Extension in Madison. Stock estimates that the average American is working at 50 percent one half of potential. In fact I think when you come to the service when you come to some of the service parts of it and some of the government agencies I would say that people are only working about 25 percent capacity in many of those areas. That observation is often met with skepticism. The machines are still running and the American worker is in fact producing more than ever

before. But that more does not add up to enough. It is small compared to the other factors used in the productivity equation. The cost of production, wages, our high standard of living and the high cost of money and energy. When those factors don't add up on the financial records that business large or small often ends up in the office of an accounting firm. With productivity as it has happened it's not something that changes next week and all of a sudden went from a good situation to a bad situation. It's a very slow erosion process that on a year to year basis may not be noticeable. Account executives have previously been referred to as efficiency experts, time study engineers or cost effectiveness advisers. Their job is helping local businesses track down the elusive causes of low productivity. I like to think of it in terms of looking at the process from the beginning to end. There is a certain amount of loss in that process. In effect there is a loss to

the brewery just because of normal the normal fermentation process the normal handling process there's leakages in whatever in the system that certain amounts are spoiled. Realistically tightening up a process whether it be on the assembly line or in a management office. Is there a general recommendation? Perhaps there is one which if you had to point them out and there are a number of them but attitude it is not something that one turns off and turns on because things aren't as good today as they were yesterday. Productivity or resource utilization is an approach to running a business. Aligning attitudes implies that management and employees have not been working together. A separation that Professor Stock blames on an overly authoritarian system of management. No one likes to be told anything. Look at yourself even when you were growing up from your parents you didn't like to be told you know you always look for ways of getting even or dragging your feet or slowing down or whatever. Because it

damages your ego. Primarily management at the upper and middle levels basically use a traditional autocratic system of management. They produce the budgets they impose them on people and the result is people are just not very anxious or excited about their work How to get people excited about their work has resulted in a spattering of what's called incentive plans. In Milwaukee it ranges from putting the workers name on the machine that he or she runs to paying an employee a fixed sum of money for a suggestion to help business. But who gets the long range benefits of that system is still questionable. It only works in the short run because you can't... People are very intelligent even though they maybe can't even read or write they're still smart enough to figure out when someone has taken advantage of them. And when you're unfair to them that's when they really then drop their productivity way down or sabotage your business or operations what they do. And people should be happy with their work. Work should be a joy and that's the big difference between

Japan and the U.S. is that the average worker in Japan is really fabulously motivated and happy about their work. Japan now holds the world's highest rating for worker productivity. Their claim is that the objectives of the individual and the objectives of the company are one in the same. Their system is participation informing and involving the workers in the business. A system said to satisfy the basic needs of the employee. Everybody has a fantastic need for love and belonging and the only way that you can demonstrate love and belonging is by participation or involving people in making decisions which affect them. There is no other way that you can demonstrate love to people. And the very simple word to demonstrate love in a business like way is to ask. Is to ask the worker for their opinion. A little corporation in Milwaukee. Probably not so little in terms of their sales now because they've grown substantially but the Western Molding Corporation has demonstrated that. Within three months four months they increase productivity like 30 percent and all they did was

ask the worker for their opinion. The person doing the job knows that job the best, he's the expert and he knows it better than anyone. And we want to get his ideas his thoughts about how anything that affects his job is done. We structured a program in July of 74 where we shut down for half a day and had a meeting away from our premises. That meeting between Western's management and the 35 men from the lumber warehouse was just the first. Every month since then a rotating committee of men meets with management to discuss products sales or even national business trends. We've kept a record of all the items that are that are brought up the warehouse meeting we have a book full. And if you went through you'd find that there's a lot of constructive material there. There's no question about what it's helped make us a better operating company. Nicholson and the office people and the men in the warehouse making and shipping the company's doors and window products are all part of a company incentive program. When the company makes money

beyond payroll and expenditures it goes into a bonus pool and is paid out proportionally with the paychecks. 79 I started on the incentive program and it's it's very beneficial. It's nice. The extra paycheck is very very nice. I think people here are more aware of the customer's needs now because they know if the customer is satisfied then we're going to eventually make more money ourselves. Since that time we've been getting a lot more ideas from the people the design of the shop has been made up by the people they took their individual work areas designed what they thought would be the best and we incorporated that design. So they really control their own work area. I guess every job or every employee is more or less his own manager These individual managers watch over their areas, the materials they use and even strive for perfect attendance to gain an extra year-end bonus. There is an internal network of peer pressure to keep the company efficient but the

participation program came to a test when the bottom recently dropped out of the housing market. Unlike in other building trades there were no permanent layoffs. They all agreed that a number of men would not work certain times. Rotating the time off and the company is still in business. There's nobody here who doesn't think that they got a job the next day or nothing like that because you know you stay in contact with them and they tell you how things are going. You know if they start to go bad or slow down you know about it. And we think enough that the management that they'll try and help us. If they really trust and respect the corporation and its management then they're gonna believe that it's going to come back to me. Now they don't trust them. We've got to change that. We've got to get management, we've got to get people to trust each other. And I think that once and once people experience this then they begin to see what a fantastic effect this has. This is where this dramatic change of productivity can come about. By the way this week in Detroit a group of American businessmen sat down to listen to Japanese

productivity experts. So more and more companies are studying the worker participation model championed by both the Japanese and Wisconsin's Gar Stock. Finally tonight a story for all of you who like me have an engineer's cap secretly tucked away at home. All over the country, big railroads like the Milwaukee Road are abandoning short-line service.those links between small towns that just aren't profitable anymore. But smaller operations are springing up in their place with a little help from the state and public transit commissions the small railroads seem to be making it. So the Milwaukee road may no longer run from Monroe to Janesville but the tracks sure aren't empty. What rumbles along the Southern Wisconsin tracks is the CM&N, the Chicago Madison and Northern Railway

kind of back porch operation only eight months in service. The organization may be short on history but not the train itsel. The muscle of the CM&N this engine was built back in 1949. It used to haul freight on the Baltimore and Ohio. Now instead of rambling from Baltimore to Buffalo it lumbers through places like Judah, Brodhead and Orfordville Chicago Madison and Northern is not exactly a major corporation. Its headquarters not exactly an executive suite and its officers not exactly corporate barons. The CM&N board of directors is made up of farmers and businessmen who think nostalgia doesn't have to conflict with the economy. John Jenswold is president. I think that I'm a bit of a sentimentalist. Yes and that

I like I grew up in a railroad family. I've been around them most of my life. But on the other hand, I see it as a very important part of our economy and we can take case histories around the Midwest around the country where a railroad line has pulled up its tracks and gone and the business in that area has just completely failed. To keep both business and the railroad rolling CM&N will need some help. Railroading these days requires both private and public efforts. It works like this; The state of Wisconsin owns the real estate. The actual right of way. The public transit commission composed of county officials owns the track. Chicago Madison Northern owns the train and pays the people. It's a marriage that hasn't always been easy. How difficult has it been to make this thing work? Tell me more about what your relationships has been like with the state.

Well it's this whole program is a new program to the state and the normal workings of the bureaucracy move rather slowly. And this has taken a good deal of time to put together. Chuck Wiesner's organizational headaches may not be the stuff folk songs are made of neither are the contents of the box cars. In this case the so-called romance of the rails is tied to fertilizer, paper and gravel local bulk products that depend on slow but less costly rail service. Service is slow in part because track conditions are so poor. During the summer months track crews attend to decades of neglect but track repair costs are high and the CM&N must woo more customers back to the rails in order to survive. When we took over this was the first time anybody from the railroad came around and said we want your business what can we do to help you. Your larger railroads are too busy trying to handle their main lines and that's of course is where the heavy dollars are. And these people on these branch lines short lines

sort of felt like neglected orphans and indeed I think they were. But perhaps the best way to attract those neglected orphans is just to take them for a ride. After all it's also the best way to attract a television crew. Now normally I don't care much for reporters who engage in their fantasy exploits. Who really cares if you can catch a frisbee backwards. But trains? Well, that's a different matter. Ride from Monroe to Janesville takes hours. Average speed less than 10 miles an hour. The butterflies keep up nicely. As for me, I loved every minute.

Two things stood out especially though for once being on the receiving end of all those friendly waves and for once not being on the receiving end of blocked traffic. Seven cars of paper and gravel may not seem like much but for businesses in small towns the day's work of old number 201 was important. In that sense nostalgia and the economy don't conflict after all. When I first called railroad manager Chuck Wiesner about doing this story, he said Hell, all you really wanna do is ride on the railroad. Well, he was right. In that sense my day's work hasn't conflicted with nostalgia either.

And I should identify the people who were so tolerant of our television antics, engineer Warren Tisler and brakeman conductor Duane Clark. I'm Dave Iverson and that's tonight's Wisconsin Magazine. Goodnight. [Outro music]