This Day In Norwood History-November 5, 1942-Women Working at Bendix To Be Best In Country

Those gorgeous and somewhat glamorous war worker girls at the Bendix Norwood Plant promise to be the country’s most skilled women workers, it was revealed by plant officials yesterday.

Of the 728 employees at the new plant, it was revealed by Industrial Manager Joseph Parks, Jr., a large percentage of them are women. All of the women have been carefully picked for the jobs by Employment Manager Robert Dolan. The employment manager picked only employees with good records and only the highest typo girls for training in the war work.

There is a lot of the work that can’t be described because it is a military secret but there is one thing sure and that Is that all of the work is being turned out for the Navy at top speed without sacrifice to quality and perfection. Much of the production in the large plant is the manufacture of precision instruments and small motor parts.

The job of arranging operations in the shop comes under the direction of William Broadley, chief production engineer. Broadley said he has broken down all of the operations into individual jobs and now they are training the women employees to carry out these jobs.

Much of the training and teaching of these girls in the use of precision instruments comes directly under the eyes of William Quinn, superintendent of assembly. He pointed out the instance of making a delicate rotary switch that has stumped girl workers in factories in other sections of the country.

But here in Norwood, said Quinn, the girls have built the switches so that they pass with flying colors the close scrutiny of Navy inspectors. He said the girls do an extra fine job.

George W. Smith, Jr., plant manager, said that as much as possible local talent is hired; practically all of the employees are residents of the state. All of the girl help are women of fine character and high caliber, said Smith, and both in the office and the shop the requirements of the girls are about the same.

The fact that the women are doing a fine job on the precision instruments was revealed by Smith in his statement that millions of dollars worth of products would be carried around in a few trucks. He said there would be no mass production.

While all of the officials agreed that the women they have hired promise to be among the best-skilled workers at the end of their intensive training it will be some time before the Bendix plant will be under full operation. Of course, it will take time to fully train the help, asserted Smith.