“An employee came up to me and said he was
stressed over management’s expectations,” she said. “I told him he should be stressed.”
The HR type sat back with the smug satisfaction
that she had put the guy in his place.
Nearby, I was quietly seething.
Ever since the recession began (yes, I know, the
economists tell us it ended a while back, but it still feels as if we’re deep
within it), workers have been understandably feeling under the gun. The prospect of losing everything you’ve
earned in life to unemployment is a powerful goad to hold on to your job no
matter what. The consequence is that
working conditions, particularly in the service and manufacturing sectors, have
deteriorated.
The capitalist ideal has always been to simplify
tasks and treat workers as barely sentient livestock. Frederick Winslow Taylor is the patron saint
of this movement.
Taylor was an engineer who developed a theory of scientific management in the late nineteenth century. His basic idea was rooted in the premise that
employers should maximize their workers’ labor potential. Managers could achieve greater efficiency by
reducing wasted motion. This goal was
particularly achievable with the simplest menial jobs.
Taylor tested his idea on an immigrant worker
in a steel mill. He had learned that the
worker, despite hefting pig iron all day, nevertheless had sufficient energy at
the day’s end to build a house for himself on his off time. Taylor decided that if this was the case, the
worker had to be slacking on the job.
Taylor told the worker that he could earn
more if he consented to Taylor directing and timing his every move. As a result of what was probably the first
time and motion study in American business, Taylor was able to streamline tasks
so that the worker was able to do more work faster. It is unrecorded whether the worker had
enough stamina left over to finish his house.
In theory, scientific management techniques
benefit management and labor alike by increasing productivity and profits. The reality is that treating employees as
labor units rather than as human beings and suppressing initiative by directing
every aspect of work inculcates intangible social costs. By imposing autocratic control over
individuals, management stifles their ability to organize. Each worker ends up living in isolated
alienation, absorbed in the sundry distractions of daily life.
With the slow death of the New Deal consensus
on the cross of Reaganism, working conditions are reverting to a postmodern
version of the early industrial age. Our
culture reflects a rising anxiety manifested in an eagerness to please, and not
only in the service economy. Literally or figuratively we’re all hanging
around hoping for a tip, counting on the capricious generosity of the affluent. White collar work still affords a certain
degree of autonomy, but many of even those jobs are subject to some form of micromanagement. Still, it’s at the bottom rung of unskilled
work that we see the worst abuses.
Mac McClelland’s Mother Jones exposé of warehouse work at an e-commerce
fulfillment center is depressingly illustrative of how Taylorism pervades the
21st century workplace. McClelland,
of course, wasn’t reliant on this position for her livelihood. But what about those of us with no other
alternative? Walking a tightrope without
a safety net, lacking retirement and healthcare coverage, unable to take
sick days or even bathroom breaks without fear of losing our job? This is the reality for millions of American
workers, and it doesn’t look as if it will get better.
One reason is that the overall employment
situation remains precarious, and many workers simply can’t pick and choose the
kind of work they do. Outsourcing and offshoring
of jobs remains the norm in many industries.
Strangely, one trend that had been undermining manufacturing in the U.S.
has begun to reverse itself. The “race
to the bottom” that sent factory jobs to China and India is slowing. In fact, manufacturing jobs are
returning. Why? Because wages have fallen and benefits cut or eliminated,
it’s actually becoming cheaper to make stuff here in the good ol’ U.S. of A
than it is overseas. In other words, we're competing with developing countries by making our workforce resemble theirs as much as possible. Even then, manufacturing
jobs as a percentage of the overall workforce have fallen to 8.5% in 2012
compared to 18.3% in 1980.[1]
It’s fashionable among conservatives these
days to accuse progressives of waging “class warfare.” Really?
It’s the owners and their minions who initiated the class war, one of
soft violence against labor. Instead of using
police, National Guard troops, and hired thugs to enforce labor discipline as
in the past, today’s employers use the law, the public policy process, and
pleas of economic necessity to accomplish their objective. Right-to-work laws hobble organizing
efforts. At-will employment preserves
the pretense of an arms-length contractual agreement while favoring the
employer by virtue of the scarcity of jobs.
Corporations move to red states for their lower taxes, reduced
tax rates ironically subsidized by federal transfer payments funded by blue state taxpayers. In this climate it's inevitable that workers are treated as
interchangeable, disposable units. If they suffer, it’s for the greater
good, it's the wisdom of the free market, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, etc.,
etc.
This “let them eat cake” attitude has to
go. Why shouldn’t the HR woman in the
restaurant worry a little for once? Why
shouldn’t she lose sleep? The day when that happens is a long way
off. Change does not come from
above. Until workers regain class
consciousness, organize, and fight back, the malignant ghost of Frederick
Winslow Taylor will continue to haunt the American workplace and the dehumanization of workers will go on and our society is all the poorer for it.
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