Meeting of the Board | Page 3

fought long and hard for control of this corporation, just the way all the other unions did. I know. I was through it all." He sat back smugly, his cheeks quivering with emotion. "You might say that I was a national leader in the movement. But I did it only for the men. The men want their dividends. They own the stock, stock is supposed to pay dividends."
"But they're cutting their own throats," Walter wailed. "You can't build a company and make it grow the way I've been forced to run it."
"Details!" Torkleson snorted. "I don't care how the dividends come in. That's your job. My job is to report a dividend every six months to the men who own the stock, the men working on the production lines."
Walter nodded bitterly. "And every year the dividend has to be higher than the last, or you and your fat friends are likely to be thrown out of your jobs--right? No more steaks every night. No more private gold-plated Buicks for you boys. No more twenty-room mansions in Westchester. No more big game hunting in the Rockies. No, you don't have to know anything but how to whip a board meeting into a frenzy so they'll vote you into office again each year."
Torkleson's eyes glittered. His voice was very soft. "I've always liked you, Walter. So I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you." He paused, then continued. "But here on my desk is a small bit of white paper. Unless you have my signature on that paper on the first of next month, you are out of a job, on grounds of incompetence. And I will personally see that you go on every White list in the country."
Walter felt the fight go out of him like a dying wind. He knew what the White list meant. No job, anywhere, ever, in management. No chance, ever, to join a union. No more house, no more weekly pay envelope. He spread his hands weakly. "What do you want?" he asked.
"I want a production plan on my desk within twenty-four hours. A plan that will guarantee me a five per cent increase in dividends in the next six months. And you'd better move fast, because I'm not fooling."
* * * * *
Back in his cubbyhole downstairs, Walter stared hopelessly at the reports. He had known it would come to this sooner or later. They all knew it--Hendricks of Promotion, Pendleton of Sales, the whole managerial staff.
It was wrong, all the way down the line. Walter had fought it tooth and nail since the day Torkleson had installed the moose heads in Walter's old office, and moved him down to the cubbyhole, under Bailey's watchful eye. He had argued, and battled, and pleaded, and lost. He had watched the company deteriorate day by day. Now they blamed him, and threatened his job, and he was helpless to do anything about it.
He stared at the machines, clicking busily against the wall. An idea began to form in his head. Helpless?
Not quite. Not if the others could see it, go along with it. It was a repugnant idea. But there was one thing they could do that even Torkleson and his fat-jowled crew would understand.
They could go on strike.
* * * * *
"It's ridiculous," the lawyer spluttered, staring at the circle of men in the room. "How can I give you an opinion on the legality of the thing? There isn't any legal precedent that I know of." He mopped his bald head with a large white handkerchief. "There just hasn't been a case of a company's management striking against its own labor. It--it isn't done. Oh, there have been lockouts, but this isn't the same thing at all."
Walter nodded. "Well, we couldn't very well lock the men out, they own the plant. We were thinking more of a lock-in sort of thing." He turned to Paul Hendricks and the others. "We know how the machines operate. They don't. We also know that the data we keep in the machines is essential to running the business; the machines figure production quotas, organize blueprints, prepare distribution lists, test promotion schemes. It would take an office full of managerial experts to handle even a single phase of the work without the machines."
The man at the window hissed, and Pendleton quickly snapped out the lights. They sat in darkness, hardly daring to breathe. Then: "Okay. Just the man next door coming home."
Pendleton sighed. "You're sure you didn't let them suspect anything, Walter? They wouldn't be watching the house?"
"I don't think so. And you all came alone, at different times." He nodded to the window guard, and turned back to the lawyer. "So we can't be sure of the legal end. You'd have to be on your toes."
"I still don't see