Using the readings from Week 6 as a foundation and then other readings and viewings from weeks 7 through 10 to enhance and improve on your Essay, answer the following question:
Are you for or against Taylorism? In other words, should we continue using Taylor’s methods now and looking to the future—for production not only of tangible goods (cars, computers, phones, etc.) and services (like the person who takes your order at McDonalds) but also for the “knowledge economy?”…That would be the knowledge economy you are preparing to enter when you get your degree.
Things to Consider:
The Work Is Deadening!
From the readings, it’s clear that by dividing up tasks, simplifying the work, using assembly lines, conveyors and the latest technology, we use people, electronic devices and machines to make stuff cheap and accessible to the masses on a global scale. But going all the way back to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the question arises, “at what price to workers do we get access to all these products?” In his day, Smith stated that, “The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations—with effects that are always nearly the same—has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in devising ways to remove difficulties that never occur. So he naturally loses the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as a human creature can possibly become.” Harsh words from the same person who marveled at “the division of labor” and what it could do for society. And not so many years later, across the Atlantic, in the early to mid-19th century, slave owners, as well as employers of the late 19th century, were very much about the business of figuring out how to control labor and make “it”go faster and more efficiently…(“it” meaning workers—human beings).
Slaves and Workers Resisted!
It is also clear from the history that slaves and workers resisted! At Homestead, skilled workers fought to the bitter end to preserve and protect their autonomy and control over the work. In the reading from Accounting for Slavery, slaves out of shear desperation, engaged in their own version of “soldiering” (observers called it “sogering”). And as you will read in the weeks ahead, this theme will carry through right up into the 1930s with the autoworkers at Flint, who again demand dignity and respect and some relief (control) over the pace of work on the assembly line. And during the last few weeks of class you will read about a women who worked on an assembly line during WWII and how she and her co-workers shared the work and trained each other on the lines doing different jobs so that they could cover for each other and change things up so as not to be left doing the same tasks “a d nauseam.”
Taylorism and Your Future Job
Finally, in bringing Taylorism into the 21st Century, you will read a few chapters from “The Global Auction,” and watch a couple of documentaries that explain what happens when you press the “return” button on your computer, and the next day your Amazon package arrives. You will see who is making it happen and the conditions of work they are being exposed too. You will see how “Digital Taylorism” is already having an impact on jobs that some of you might take after you graduate. Thus, while there are clear alternatives to using Taylorist methods of production, employers continue to apply the methodology to maximize profits no matter the cost to workers.
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