Jim Robbins, a young veteran, returns from the Army following World War II. He checks in at his former employer (U.S. Steel), where a friendly counselor makes it clear there will be a job for him, suggests training courses to bring his knowledge and skills up to speed, and in every way welcomes him back into what narrator George Hicks calls the "industrial family."

This film is filled with many fascinating vignettes of the workplace and postwar economic situation and is a little less sanitized than the average industrial. What makes Unfinished Business most fascinating, though, is that it's an expression of two corporate objectives that seem largely to have vanished from the scene today: (1) maintaining a kind of "social contract," a guarantee of lifetime employment for loyal workers which also had the effect of stabilizing the national economy; and (2) explaining and justifying corporate objectives not just to stockholders but to the nation at large.
Unfinished Business was produced in two different versions. This one is the longer version and was intended for employees and stockholders. Another, trimmed down to ten minutes, was made to play in commercial theaters as a short subject and reached millions of members of the public.

But even with a twenty minute running time, this longer version didn't find time to explain how Jim has an eighteen-month-old baby after being away for four years.

Producer: Handy (Jam) Organization
Sponser: US Steel Co.