ABSTRACT
Giving support can take many forms, from a single, simple act of trust and respect to a whole raft of changes. To better understand the infinite variety of approaches that can be taken, this chapter examines three different corporate plans, which have little in common save for the fact that they have gone beyond the old but seldom-acted-upon cliché about supporting the worker and, in actual practice, found new ways to do it. These three are General Electric's (GE) Columbia experiments, Edwin H. Land and his polarized family and the deal at the dairy. When big GE customers come to the plant, workers give them tours of the plant and get to talk to them about the product. For over twenty years, the company has had a running deal going with its employees, geared to keeping them working, even though the dairy industry has gone through a series of mostly technical changes aimed at reducing the workforce.
