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![]() Career Profile: Dunn, Malcom
They sent Dunn in as General Manager. When he got to Cleveland he met with the union leadership. That's when he found out they expected their new owner to fund continuing losses while the plant was retrofitted for a product line on the plastics side. Dunn had been set up by the former owner. The guy must have told the union that in order to get their support during the sale. Dunn took about five minutes to tell these guys the score. There would be no new investment in the plant. The plastic pipe business had two or three big players, not lots of small companies selling plastic pipe. The equipment, technology, distribution, everything was different. His job was to restore profitability and that meant cutting costs. That was all the union men needed to hear. They walked out of the meeting. That night, Dunn's car blew up. A note slipped under the door of his hotel room suggested he reconsider the business strategy. He went back to sleep, but at 6:00 AM Dunn phoned plant security from the hotel lobby. He told them to shut the gates and lock up the building. The plant was closed until further notice. He then got in a cab, went to the airport, and flew home to New York. Dunn refused to talk to the union. He gave an interview to a reporter from the Cleveland newspaper, but that was it. After six weeks of the silent treatment, two negotiators for the union came to New York and asked what he wanted. Dunn gave them the restructuring plan he had put together. It called for a thirty percent across the board pay cut, but no lay-offs. It also granted thirty percent employee ownership in return. After sales recovered from the shutdown, the business would break-even on this plan. If productivity could be improved or costs reduced over time, the employees would have profits to share in. Dunn told them it was his only offer and had one additional unwritten stipulation: he wanted his car replaced. They accepted the offer on the spot. Next stop for Dunn was similar work in the military-industrial market. Defense-related spending reductions were throwing huge manufacturers into constant convulsions. Dunn freelanced himself around the world as contract cancellations forced these corporations to find new lines of business. As a temporary manager, Dunn could make decisions even if they led to the end of his own role. Lately, he was finding small projects like this one more rewarding and less stressful. Maybe he was going soft.
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