1. LABOR PIRACY ON THE BRANDYWINE.
- Author
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Gibson, George H.
- Subjects
- *
BUSINESS intelligence , *PIRACY (Copyright) , *LABOR , *PAPER mills , *TRADE secrets , *EMPLOYEE recruitment , *UNFAIR competition , *EMPLOYEE loyalty , *CONTRACT labor , *MANUFACTURING processes , *TEXTILE industry - Abstract
Industrial espionage has been raised to a sophisticated level today, but pirating labor is still the quickest and surest way to get at a competitor's trade secrets. The loss of trade secrets through changes in employment was a principal topic of discussion at the eighth annual conference of the Patent, Trademark, and Copyright Research Institute of George Washington University held in Washington in July 1964. Conferees agreed that losses occur because employers put a price on their ethics and employees on their loyalty. As professor Richard B. Morris has made clear, pirating of workers and interference with contract relations in American history goes back to the colonial period, when both bound servants and hired workers were enticed away from their employers for their labor and their skills. Stolen manufacturing processes were the basis for the establishment of the textile industry in this country. The seduction of workers by pirates of manufacturing processes was a real and present danger to a community of manufacturers along Brandywine Creek in northern Delaware in the early nineteenth century.
- Published
- 1967
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