LABOUR PROCESS - KEY PEOPLE

Question 1

Frederick Taylor

Answer 1

created the idea of ‘scientific management’ and applied it to work. He argued that industries should follow tightly controlled, ‘scientific’ methods.

Question 2

Henry Ford

Answer 2

Made standardised cars that were half the price of comparable models, but came with little to no choice- he described the Model-T as “any colour you like, as long as it’s black”. This was achieved by close control, unskilled workers, and management of workers and the production process. There is no opportunity for workers to make decisions or exercise any autonomy- instead they just repeat one task over and over again on a production line.

Question 3

Abercrombie et al

Answer 3

Identified four ways in which workers are controlled:
- Direct control: owners and managers directly supervise. Uncommon in larger companies
- Technical control: workers have limited range of tasks, often overseeing technologies
- Bureaucratic control: workers are controlled by authority in the firm, where everyone has an immediate superior with formal rules
- Responsible autonomy: workers are given control and ‘self-policing’ and are held accountable for the final product, not the way they’ve got there.

Question 4

Ritzer

Answer 4

Applied the ideas of Taylorism and Fordism to modern industries and has described more industries as having gone through “McDonaldization”.
This is where:
Production is streamlined by evaluating every part of the labour process to make it as smooth as possible (efficiency)
The value of every item is carefully calculated (calculability)
The way the industry operates is repeated everywhere, over and over again (predictability)
Workers are controlled by managers (control)

Question 5

Mayo et al

Answer 5

bserved the Hawthorne electrical plant to try to identify factors that made workers more productive. They identified five workers who knew they were being observed, and began to alter conditions.
They would increase or decrease the temperature or the lighting. They would extend or shorten the rest breaks or the working hours. What they found was that the workers were more productive even when they made the conditions worse.

Question 6

Braverman

Answer 6

Argued that work is becoming less skilled as a way of controlling workers. He believed that, by taking away workers’ abilities and making them do repetitive, talentless tasks, managers and owners powers increase.

Question 7

Frey and Osborne

Answer 7

predicted that half of all workers could be replaced by computers in the next 20 years.

Question 8

Brynjolfsson and McAfee

Answer 8

argued that artificial intelligence would “do for mental power what the steam engine did for physical power”.

Question 9

Paul Mason

Answer 9

has calculated the likelihood of people in different roles being replaced by machines, and has argued that teachers and sex workers are the least likely to be replaced- whilst people in ‘greeting’ roles like call centre workers and secretaries are the most likely.

Question 10

Gallie

Answer 10

Argued that there is a process of ‘upskilling’, where we increasingly need more qualifications & specialisms for jobs.

Question 11

Robert Blauner

Answer 11

Develops Marx’s idea of alienation to argue that it happens in four key ways:
Powerlessness
Meaninglessness
Isolation
Self-estrangement

Question 12

Michel Foucault

Answer 12

Argued that modern capitalism constantly surveills the working class. This is through government laws that invade our lives, CCTV and other security systems, and surveillance in the workplace. This of a workplace and consider all the ways in which workers are observed in the course of their work.

Question 13

David Harvey

Answer 13

Is critical of the idea that flexible accumulation truly creates greater freedom, though. He argues that it creates uncertainty and inconsistency, and that whilst people may have more choice they are very unlikely to be successful. Fundamentally, the ownership of big businesses still rests with the bourgeoisie.

Question 14

Laurie Graham

Answer 14

Conducted research in a Japanese car firm based in the USA. She found that products were highly customisable to meet customers’ needs.
However, this meant that work relied on peer pressure from different teams where one team will pressure another to offer more diversity.
Similarly, production decreased as one team may have to wait for another to find out the customers’ order, or waiting for a key component to arrive.

Question 15

Bonacich and Appelbaum

Answer 15

Argue that this has created a ‘race to the bottom’ where corporations will offer lower and lower prices in order to continue to appeal to consumers.

Question 16

Ian Taylor

Answer 16

argues that this ‘race to the bottom’ continues the capitalist exploitation of a global working class by a global ruling class. The Western clothing company has no need to worry about employee rights in the rest of the world because they don’t run the factories where clothes are produced. The ‘race to the bottom’ means that workers’ wages get squeezed over and over, and working conditions deteriorate, to benefit a Western consumer-base.

Question 17

Anna Pollert

Answer 17

Argued that Fordism was never as prominent as widely believed- a few high profile companies used those ideas, but most didn’t. Therefore the Postmodernist idea that we’ve moved onto a new stage is exaggerated.

Question 18

Wood

Answer 18

Argued that post-Fordism is really a continuation of Fordism, as most products continue to be made on production lines. He argued that it is the diversity of products that makes it feel ‘customisable’- this is just a consequence of the sheer amount of manufacturers.

Question 19

Ulrich Beck

Answer 19

Argues that one problem with globalisation is that it has brought us access to new ‘risks’- things we cannot control.
As life has modernised, and technology has improved, traditional risks (such as disease, war etc) have faded, and been replaced with large, global risks that we can understand less effectively.