Reflections: On Making Work Meaningful

Peterson, Brent

REFLECTIONS On Making Work Meaningful BRENT PETERSON From where I sit in West Germany, it is almost laughable to read that Leonard Woodcock, head of the United Auto Workers, recently asked for...

...Schumacher, the British economist who developed the idea in Small Is Beautiful, argues quite convincingly that Third World nations do not need factories as large as General Motors, which is itself larger in economic might than much of the Third World...
...First, to what extent is the assembly line a means of greater efficiency and to what extent is it...
...Its defenders should be prepared to prove that particular assembly lines have overwhelming economic benefits which offset the mental and physical losses incurred by assembly line workers...
...It would certainly be easier to make changes in the production process, for if peasants in Peru could maintain and repair the vehicles, workers in the United States could do more than tighten one bolt at their station on the assembly line...
...Again, simpler processes on a smaller scale are easier to change and easier to control...
...If all this suggests that certain changes in the production processes of modern industry are possible, we must ask who should have the power to initiate and direct these changes...
...From the workers' side, one reads that union officials soon cave in to management demands...
...All this implies a voice for workers in the determination of production goals...
...The experience of self-determination, especially if — as is the case in Europe — it comes to be viewed as a right and not a privilege, could have broad political and cultural ramifications...
...It is equally clear that G.M.'s size may not be appropriate to workers at G.M...
...But even more significant might be a new attitude toward technology...
...This approach to the issue of control strikes me as completely backwards...
...A second, related question involves the relationship between tools which demand less physical energy and the assembly line...
...Especially in the latter, by changing the conditions of production and the traditional skill requirements, the power of otherwise scarce workers to barpin with their employers was broken...
...Critics, even those like Dexter Goulston ("Blue-Collar Blues," The Progressive, December 1975), who are sympathetic to the workers, are far from hopeful about ever being able to change the "subhuman tasks industry offers...
...We must ask several questions about assembly line production in general...
...it implies a certain measure of political power, it necessitates a society oriented more toward use than toward profit, but a society which, at least in the industrialized nations, is probably affordable...
...Yet it is only after such an analysis that experiments such as Saab-Scandia's become relevant...
...From his often penetrating analysis of modern technology in the auto industry, Goulston concludes, "The only course appears to be that of simplifying operations even further and adding the harassment of close supervision backed by disciplinary action...
...While a production worker can never be as free as a tradesman, we should not confuse the advantages of mechanization with the place where they are often found and assume that those advantages would disappear in an altered context...
...it puts power not in the hands of workers but of union functionaries, and frequently denies even them the decisive voice that could mute criticism of their effectiveness...
...In some cases the aim was to speed up back-breaking, unskilled labor...
...In any case, the course most likely in the United States is for management to grant workers' representatives one or more seats on the board of directors and to assume that union grievance committees will handle problems at lower levels...
...Assembly lines and mechanization were initially introduced in those areas of production where labor costs were highest...
...Corporate managers and stockholders are understandably reluctant to give up their prerogatives...
...An alternative to this syndrome has been suggested by Ivan Illich in DeschoolingSociety.'m which he argues that the Third World, and not unthinkably the United States as well, does not need modern roads, cars, and trucks but "mechanical donkeys" that travel no faster than fifteen miles per hour and cost no more than $1,000 — in other words, cheap cars for hauling kids, produce, and groceries short distances...
...Moreover, with the adoption of "scientific management" which measured every detail of the work process and adapted tools, machines, and work routines with extraordinary precision, the opportunity presented itself to exercise total control over the worker's body — and his need to think...
...And the urban geography which the automobile made possible now makes life without a car impossible...
...For my sketch of this puzzle, and some of the questions and answers it demands, I propose to stick initially with the example of the auto industry...
...Whether cybernation is theoretically possible is open to question, but even if it is feasible, it holds out the prospect of the most alienated of all worlds —a world in which people are denied any meaningful work in exchange for the dubious benefit of almost unlimited leisure...
...To be sure, the worker representatives are outnumbered by those from management, which has limited both the scope and number of reforms, but with the support of even the conservative Christian Democrats, codetermination is a fact in almost every factory in the country...
...If this is true, an inescapable conclusion is that there are too many people building too many of the wrong kind of cars...
...At the bottom level of factory work, the Europeans have also been leading the way with "humanization of the workplace...
...This has profound consequences not only for the users of such automobiles but also for the fewer number of people engaged in their production...
...REFLECTIONS On Making Work Meaningful BRENT PETERSON From where I sit in West Germany, it is almost laughable to read that Leonard Woodcock, head of the United Auto Workers, recently asked for two seats on the board of directors of the Chrysler Corporation and then immediately backed off, calling the request "more or less a philosophical thought, not a big demand...
...in other cases the aim was to reduce the dependence on costly crafts and trades...
...consciously or unconsciously, a means of controlling workers...
...it also proved to be a means of enforcing that discipline without ever questioning its ultimate necessity — certainly without asking workers...
...This has two implications, the less important of which is that management would have to relinquish its control not only over the production process but also over the bodies and minds of workers, who would themselves set work routines...
...If I were working on an assembly line, I would surely want a power saw, but this would in no way compensate me for the loss of freedom and variety in the craft of carpentry...
...There might be an increased use of "mid-range" technology — machines and production processes as advanced as those used in the most sophisticated assembly lines but consciously designed for fewer workers in smaller factories...
...Today's automobiles are built by so many people performing so many different tasks mainly because Americans have been conditioned to purchase self-destructive monsters rather than safe, sturdy vehicles built for use rather than status...
...More importantly, Illich contends that by an act of conscious design, perhaps increasing the initial cost by 25 per cent, one could make sure that the donkeys would be simple enough to be repaired by almost anyone who had need of one...
...The only alternative is some form of cybernation — the attempt, through machines, to eliminate all work...
...Moreover, before too long three or five operations on a modified assembly line are almost as boring as only one...
...The assembly line not only required discipline unknown to pre-industrial workers...
...An example from my own experience as a carpenter illustrates the difference: I would hate to have to build a house without a power saw...
...Increased productivity has also meant more intensive work, with the pressure of supervision displaced at best — a kind of subtle resort to piecework rates...
...Each worker performs a variety of tasks, and production goals are set for the team as a whole...
...It is there that these reforms have been discussed and, at least partially, tested...
...Should decision-making power be in the hands of stockholders, managers, engineers, and sales experts, or should it be delegated, wholly or partially, to the workers...
...In the United States they would have to be part of a comprehensive mass transit system...
...BRENT PETERSON (Brent Peterson, a sometime carpenter, teaches English in West Germany...
...only when the product has been rationalized can the production process be rationalized...
...How this will work is yet to be seen...
...Both remedies are beginning to find their way into serious discussions in the United States, but they have already been criticized as ineffectual, ill-founded, and impossible...
...There are limits to both of these approaches — limits to corporate money and limits'to the acceptance of displaced gratification in the form of wages...
...handsaws are serviceable instruments, but their only contribution to the labor process is to make it more arduous...
...I wonder, though, whether it really is so hopeless, whether these problems are inherent in modern industry...
...The German coal and steel industries recently celebrated their twenty-fifth year of Mitbestimmung (codetermination), a policy which gives workers, through their unions, a voice in virtually all management decisions...
...Here again we must make a distinction between the power to plan and market a product and the power to control the workplace...
...as in the case of Illich's mechanical donkeys, some elements of production might be made more expansive in order to make them more useful and humane...
...Also called "job enrichment," the concept is most conspicuous at Saab-Scandia's Sodertalje plant, where teams of workers have partially replaced the traditional assembly line...
...Worker productivity seems to have improved, but again there is serious disagreement about how meaningful these changes have been...
...We can continue to operate under our present system only so long as workers can be bought off by higher pay and marginally improved working conditions, or forced to work under ever closer supervision...
...Both codetermination and job enrichment attempt to combat the so-called blue-collar blues — one with an attack on worker boredom, the other by giving workers a voice in the decision-making processes which affect them...
...It seems to me that such pessimism and unwillingness to change stem from the failure to ask certain questions about the social role of both the forms of production and the resultant products, from a failure to see that assembly lines and boards of directors are not isolated objects but pieces of a puzzle which make little sense when viewed alone...
...The Swedish parliament, for example, has recently approved legislation which gives labor representatives a virtual veto in all decisions— from work routines to promotions and dismissals — in addition to their places on management boards...
...I would suggest that, at least initially, the workplace itself is more important: It is there that workers should strive for broad and broadly exercised powers...
...Control, of course, is not the only reason for an assembly line, but in any effort to humanize working conditions, the assembly line itself cannot be ignored...
...Those who think change unlikely often fail to make the distinction between the tools on an assembly line and the line itself...
...They could be attached to irrigation systems or small electric generators...
...In certain models of socialist societies, workers, in view of their all-important role in production, have an important role in both areas...

Vol. 40 • November 1976 • No. 11


 
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