Making Zippers: All the Way with Y.K.K.

"They're bloody sociable, and they're fairer than English bosses ... We pay them back by pulling our weight."

So says Lillian Gallagher, 41, a British housewife who earns $50 a week as a packer at the Japanese-owned Y.K.K. zipper plant in Runcorn, 18 miles from Liverpool. Hers is a rare testimonial in Britain, where labor and management often seem less interested in pulling their weight than tearing each other apart. Yet in Runcorn the prevailing spirit is "All the way with Y.K.K."--the corporate initials of Yoshida, the Japanese firm that is the world's biggest zipper manufacturer.

Troubled by increasing costs and the three to six months' time that it took to ship zippers from Japan to the United Kingdom, Y.K.K. in 1969 invested $3.5 million in a British plant. The gamble--it was the first direct Japanese manufacturing investment in Britain--has been a mighty success. The plant has never been hit by a strike or a slowdown. The 150 British employees (there are seven Japanese working at management level) voted down a unionization plan last year for fear that it might cost them their Christmas bonus. General Manager Hiroo Minami feels that there is basically no difference in performance between British workers and those in Japan.

Inside the plant, pop music throbs from loudspeakers while a multinational collection of American, West German, British and Japanese machines turn out 6,000,000 zippers a month. The machines whir under the usually watchful eyes of long-haired young men who are paid $66.25 a week and, as one of them puts it, "all the ale we can sink." All men employees wear Y.K.K.'s jackets, which have the company initials proudly displayed on the breast pocket and no fewer than six zippers on the front, the pockets and the cuffs.

Japanese-style corporate paternalism is strong. Y.K.K. provides cut-rate bus service for employees, and Minami is forever throwing morale-boosting, all-hands-welcome parties at the Esso Motel in Runcorn. After work on Fridays, the Japanese make a point of dropping into Tanner's Pub near the plant to socialize, and the British employees like to ask one another "What doing?"--in good-humored imitation of their bosses' awkward English.

Tommy Hughes, an 18-year-old machine operator, complains that the Japanese "have vile tempers. As soon as something goes wrong, no matter how small, they act like little kids." But John Davies, 45, who represents the employees on the plant's Japanese-style "works committee," renders the final verdict: "We asked to finish at 4:30 p.m. instead of 5 on Friday; they gave us that. We asked for a Christmas holiday; they gave us that. We asked for a sickness scheme, and they gave us that too. These Japanese seem to understand us. I wouldn't want to work for an English firm again."

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