That brand is long gone...wonder why??
Ford paid his workers such a then- high wage fro basically two reasons:
1. There was a labor shortage..He needed to attract workers, especially from competitors.
2. Ford had introduced the assembly line. Workers were very resistant to it at first..it was totally different from anything else..so he needed the higher wage to convince them to come work and try it..
Plus Ford wasn’t dictated to by the fed. gov. He made a business decision...just like the owner of any other business. What Ford did had nothing to do with raising the minimum wage. If Ford couldn’t have paid his workers that money, he wouldn’t have done so. That’s a lot different than the gov. telling a business owner what they have to pay their workers.
The assembly line was a big reason. If workers are assembling cars the old way, then it is not a huge problem if you have an absentee problem. You can just shift a few workers around and produce fewer cars that day. On the other hand you need a minimum attendence in every position to keep the line running. The high pay was combined with firing for absense and drunkenness to improve productivity. But that was Ford’s choice, not the government’s.