.... 

At some McWane plants, turnover rates approach 100 percent a year. Acipco — with a work force of about 3,000, three-fifths the size of McWane — has annual turnover of less than half a percent; 10,000 people recently applied for 100 openings. McWane has also been cited for 40 times more federal safety violations since 1995, OSHA records show.

Acipco was founded in 1905 by John J. Eagan, a devoutly Christian industrialist from Atlanta who had resolved to demonstrate that a factory could be run on the basis of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Mr. Eagan believed that if workers felt they had a genuine stake they would work harder and smarter and produce more. To carry out his plan, he decided to institute profit sharing for all employees. Upon his death, he declared, Acipco's workers would inherit the company.

Many of his fellow industrialists ridiculed the plans as do-gooder nonsense, doomed to failure. Historians say the doubters included Acipco's own president, J.R. McWane.

Mr. McWane had spent much of his early career at Acipco. But days before the profit-sharing plan was made public, he severed all financial ties with Acipco and set up his own pipe shop across town, the McWane Cast Iron Pipe Company. The two companies — and their dueling visions of capitalism — have been in competition ever since.

 for the beginning of the article: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/national/09PIPE.html?pagewanted=8 

 Economic Development Partners of Alabama, EDPA,

Partners Magazine article: 

 http://www.edpa.org/docs/partners-magazine/sm02art3.pdf