Goodyear-Titan: Maurice M.Taylor, Jr. – The Delusions of the "Grizzly"

A look at the CEO of Titan, who sent a letter to Arnaud Montebourg insulting French workers. This is not his first provocation.

On the Titan website, you are welcomed by the ferocious growl of a bear. It is certainly a tribute to the company’s CEO, Maurice Taylor, nicknamed “the Grizz.” Why? His brutal management methods and his nasty character. When his company entered the stock market in 1993, he received a plaque on which was written: “In North America there is no known predator to the grizzly.” Before that, he claims that he had another nickname: “Attila!” In short, 68-year-old “Morry” Taylor possesses neither a soft side nor a diplomatic one. Arnaud Montebourg learned this at his expense. To justify his refusal to buy the Goodyear site in Amiens-Nord, Taylor lashed out, in a letter to the minister, at the “so-called workers.” “The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours.” “Soon, in France [there will be no jobs] and everyone will spend his day sitting in cafés, drinking red wine,” he concluded.

The beefcake has spent his life in the Midwest. Born in Detroit, he grew up in Ellsworth, a small municipality of Michigan. His father owned a steel factory that produced ammunition for Army tanks. Taylor began his engineering studies at Michigan Technological University, but did not finish them, as he found employment at General Motors. He recalled, in an article in the Christian Science Monitor, how he left after six months, because he was “bored” and the business was “too top heavy.” He then went to work in the family factory, which went bankrupt in 1975. An audit shows that the business overcharged Department of Defense contracts; Taylor’s father was charged with fraud. The factory also left a horribly polluted site that the family refused to clean up; it was taxpayers who eventually paid the price. The stage was set.

“I Don’t Care If People Like Me”

Morry Taylor became a tire seller and in 1983 bought an ailing tire factory from Firestone in Illinois with another industry worker. This was a brilliant move. He straightened it out by cutting management and firing union workers. Since then, the business has not stopped growing, thanks to the purchase of tire and wheel plants for agricultural machines and construction vehicles in different countries. Today, Titan International employs 3,600 people; its turnover amounts to nearly $2 billion. Without mincing words, Taylor has done everything to block work inspectors’ access to his factories and has faced some violent confrontations with trade unions. In 1998, factory employees in Iowa and Mississippi went on strike. They protested against working hours, which they felt were too hard. Taylor suggested that they go find work in Cuba, “where they would be more at home ‘with the leftist, socialist, communism there,’” and replaced them with non-trade union workers.

In 1996, the owner-turned-millionaire decided to run in the Republican primaries. He was unknown to the majority of the public and had no political experience. You might as well say that he had no chance — but Morry Taylor doubted nothing. “You can’t go wrong with Titan,” exclaims his website. He built his campaign on his experience as a self-made man: the “economic patriot” who was going to create jobs and run the country efficiently. His plan: Fire a third of the best-paid government employees to balance the budget, get rid of the elected representatives’ retirement fund, freeze public retirements and dismantle the IRS. “The State Department? ‘Dynamite it,’” he exclaimed in a New York Times interview. “Law and order? ‘Bring back the whip.’”

“I’m abrasive because I want to get the job done,” he let slip. “The politicians — they all want you to like them. I don’t care if people like me.” In his defense, he maintains his frank manner of speaking, even in front of the electors. He dared to say that it is up to women, and not the state, to decide whether or not they want to abort. This was sacrilege to the conservatives. During electoral rallies, he gave out $25,000 by organizing lotteries. In the end, he took himself out of the race. He spent $6.5 million of his own fortune and won over only 1 percent of the vote.

Many Whipping Boys

Arnaud Montebourg can take comfort. Taylor has all kinds of whipping boys. He co-wrote a book entitled “Kill All the Lawyers — and Other Ways to Fix the Government.” In 2010, he bought an entire page of a newspaper to give advice to Barack Obama and the Democrats, whom he detests. To reduce the deficit, he said, it is necessary to get rid of sick leave, the secretary of education and the secretary of state (because there is no need for ambassadors), lower business taxes and establish protectionist tariffs. He finally concluded that Congress should only sit once a month, which would force elected representatives to spend more time in their constituencies and “open their brains a little.”

On the other hand, he abandoned his crusade to buy a “Made in America” tire. In 1996, in one of his publicity campaigns, he said: “Putting a Michelin on American farm wheels is like putting a beret on a cowboy. A Firestone is like a farmer wearing a Kimono.” And for good reason: He is in the process of negotiating the purchase of a tire factory in India that plans to export to America.

We haven’t finished hearing about Maurice Taylor. He warned that if President Obama won, he would run for the 2016 presidential election, “because somebody is going to have to fix this mess and it is going to be a real bad mess in four more years if he’s running it.”