Over de Auteur
Matt Garcia is assistant professor of ethnic studies and history at the University of Oregon.
Werken van Matt Garcia
A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970 (2002) 35 exemplaren
Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World’s Most Notorious Corporations (2023) 4 exemplaren
A World of Its Own 1 exemplaar
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Eli Black (born Eliasz Menasze Blachowicz) migrated to the US from Poland as a child, arriving in New York with his mother and two sisters. They joined Eli’s father, an Orthodox poultry slaughterer. Black studied at Yeshiva College, intending to become a rabbi. Yet as he was finishing his studies at Yeshiva he had already begun night classes at Columbia University Business School. In 1945, as the war ended, Black proposed to Shirley Lubell and resigned as rabbi, taking a position in sales at Lehman Brothers on Wall Street. As the Black family grew, he passed from one position and company to another, eventually becoming CEO of American Seal-Kap (AMK, a producer of milk bottle caps), where he streamlined production and took risks that recognised the changing consumption habits of American families. Black repeated this formula after acquiring the meatpacking firm John Morrell and Company.
Black’s confidence that he could simply replicate his previous successes (streamline, focus on efficiency, negotiate with unions, identify changes in consumption, repeat)led him, in 1970, to acquire United Fruit, its merger with AMK forming United Brands (the ‘octopus’ of the title). Various other companies (from lettuce growers to sunglass makers) were brought under the United Brands umbrella. Black promoted a socially conscious model, arguing that a corporation is responsible not only to its shareholders, but also to its workers and their communities. Black took over United Fruit just as its crops were hit by a hurricane in Honduras. Despite this setback he quickly negotiated with local unions, offering a better pay and benefits package than union leaders had expected. The losses United Brands suffered in bananas, Black hoped, would be made up for by improved sales of lettuce through its subsidiary Inter Harvest. But here, too, Black’s previously successful business tactics faltered. A poor choice of lettuce transportation led to rotten vegetables and a union dispute in California with the Cesar Chavez-led United Farm Workers.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Courtney J. Campbell is the author of Region Out of Place: The Brazilian Northeast and the World… (meer)