New CEO took International Harvester from 4th largest US firm to bankruptcy | Hacker News Reader

New CEO took International Harvester from 4th largest US firm to bankruptcy

en.wikipedia.org

32 pointsjakewins14 comments

FTA: Speaking to a group at Harvard Business School six months after leaving Harvester, McCardell was asked his assessment of his performance; he said that despite some regrets, "I think I rate myself superb."[6] In 1986, McCardell told UPI, "I feel very good about my years at Harvester. We had a few good years. I don’t think we made any one major mistake. In retrospect, I think we could have done some things differently. None of us was smart enough – myself included – to realize the depth of the problem."[34] Discussing his remuneration, he said he thought, in retrospect, that he was "underpaid".

Utterly unbelievable.

>FTA: "On May 3, 1982, one day after the UAW ratified the concessionary contract, Archie McCardell was fired by International Harvester.[1] Although McCardell asserted he had resigned, industry and press observers said that he was fired."

Cognitive dissonance the size that world hadn't seen up til then. Now: everyday occurrence, business as usual.

LeSigh

People keep quoting me these studies they think show CEOs have no effect on company bottom lines. I keep sending them Craig Morgan playlists on Spotify back.

“Chugga-lugga-luggin’ five miles an houuuuuuuurrr”

To be fair, it's the recession of 1980-1983 that did him in. Their industry was hit very badly. Even well run companies in their industry like caterpillar barely made it through by the skin of their teeth, much less a company that not well run

My favorite angle is he left Xerox to run IH. How does that line up time-wise with all the seminal developments at Xerox PARC? Did he also leave money lying on the table that would later be scooped up and parlayed into riches by Jobs and Apple?

the union did a great job keeping its members employed

Is this a story about how a new CEO destroyed a company? Or how the UAW got too greedy and destroyed a company?

Don't see union greed as a component of this story. Sounds like Archie's "rigid bargaining stance" blew up in his face when the UAW waited him out for six months

Yes, that's what Wikipedia says, basically verbatim. But is that fact internally consistent with the rest of the story?

It would save everyone a lot of time if you'd just make an argument.

I did. It takes a few more clock cycles to process I guess.

You have a keen eye. You'll notice too that OP linked to wikipedia directly

UAW represents the staff of multiple companies, this CEO represented one. Not sure why the CEO expected the UAW to bail him out of his suicidal negotiations when they had less to lose.

He also kept giving out bonuses to the salaried employees while playing hardball with the union, which is just petty, spiteful, and vindictive. He also didn’t cut his own salary. He put the union in the position they couldn’t opt to cut their salaries to save the business because he was intentionally enriching everybody BUT the union while the company failed.

Yea, like how they destroyed Ford, GM and Chrysler? While the auto industry recovered, International did not.

Unions were willing to work with other companies in the early 80s during the oil / financial problem, but from everything I read it was a two way street and their priority was the workers they represented.

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