REFLECTIONS

...Yet the primary advantage of the assembly line was that it allowed management to break down the work of building a car into a great number of minute operations which could be closely regulated and controlled...

...and we execute the design, all the while giving rare vent to intellect, fancy, and passion...

...To keep workers from revolting against the loss of their own autonomy and creativity—and worker resistance has always been more widespread than is commonly realized—the economic system had to deliver rewards, and that it has done...

...While we shouldn't romanticize the nature of late Nineteenth Century work, we can say that a major thrust of recent economic "progress" has been to de-skill the mass of workers...

...If we don't choose to change our ways, we are told, resource shortages and intolerable levels of pollution will change them for us...

...Though economists often call these changes efficient, their primary advantage has been to force workers to work harder and faster at more narrow jobs so that the less skilled can be hired at lower wages, producing a better profit margin...

...But though U.S...

...An emphasis on the need to change the way we live threatens neither the media conglomerates nor their corporate sponsors as would an emphasis on the need to change patterns of work...

...Yet unless we change the way we work, the way we live will become the death, of our planet or our liberties—or both...

...The subject of debate: Can Americans change the way they live enough to avert the coming environmental crisis...

...plant hand becomes the automated robot...

...corporations periodically talk about improving the quality of work life, such talk always stops when management foresees any challenge to its prerogatives...

...REFLECTIONS John Buell OUR JOBS, OUR SELVES Shortly after the Arab oil embargo of 1973, a United Auto Workers vice president, Douglas Fraser, remarked that members of his union couldn't be expected to give up their automobiles...

...If we run short of oil, it will be our fault, we'll be told, and so we must suffer and bear suffering stoically—losing even that meager range of choice and creativity left to us...

...I have no quarrel with that prediction...

...Fraser (now UAW president) was an early participant in what we might call the Great Lifestyle Dialog...

...Mayor Koch tells New Yorkers to use less water for toothbrushing and showers...

...Most of us were taught in school that the assembly line is a marvel of modern technology, permitting the same amount of labor to produce far more goods than was ever possible before...

...Only a few workers with an irrational resistance to machines opposed the assembly line...

...Instead of skilled artisans building cars, the modern G.M...

...But I do question whether the "choice" of a different lifestyle is one the consumer should be asked to bear alone...

...The message that we must make sacrifices would also create a political climate in which policy makers could claim a legitimacy for repression, once shortages become acute...

...There is an alternative: the redirection of technology to make work not only productive but as stimulating as possible...

...Consumerism is not, after all, an individual matter: It is an artifact of our culture—particularly of our work life...

...To ask workers to give up those playthings is t? blame the victims of the crisis—those whose worklife and culture have fostered the need to consume—rather than the corporate interests who profit from the standardization of workers and their toil...

...After working in the confining environment of the assembly line, workers needed the freedom their own cars gave them...

...The functions of the traditional executive secretary are often divided among secretarial pools, each performing a discrete function such as typing, dictation, filing, and photocopying...

...So it is with all of the toys and games and diversions that purport to compensate us for the vitality that has been extracted from our work...

...But merely to focus on the material nature of these rewards—these goods—is to fail to recognize their full import: The consumer lifestyle has offeree*—or has been advertised to offer— the opportunity for planning, spontaneity, and creativity that most jobs deny...

...Each pool has its own supervisor, and each pool member is closely monitored...

...In a rare moment of candor, Henry Ford summarized the beauty of the assembly line: "We regulated the speed of the men by the speed of the conveyors...

...Shell and Atlantic Richfield ask us to cut down on our driving and do more car-pooling...

...Environmentalists suggest that a whole range of modern "conveniences" from air conditioners to microwave ovens will have to go...

...The purchase of, say, a new sound-on-film movie camera offers a chance to exercise one's skill, first in the purchase itself: Which of the various sound and lens features make for the best combination of price and quality...

...Broad worker control of the workplace thus makes for a difficult political agenda— especially for too many union leaders who accept corporate control of the workplace...

...Then, too, the products offer the chance to play...

...We conceive a picture, a meal, a garden...

...Even the most unregenerate highbrow would have to admit, at least in private, that consumerism does provide its satisfactions...