Workers and Taylor's 'Scientific Management'
By Timothy Prisk at Dec 14, 2009 |
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"You're a very good worker," said the efficiency expert as he watched a carpenter plane a piece of wood. "Now if we can just stick a buffer on your elbow you could plane and buff the wood with the same motion."
"Yeah," the carpenter responded, "and if you'd stick a broomstick up your ass you could take your notes and sweep the floor at the same time."
-- Mitchell Cohen, Big Science, the Fragmenting of Work, and the Left's Curious Notion of Progress, as cited in Clifford Conner's A People's History of Science.



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By Crase, Calvin at Feb 20, 2010 19:42 PM
There's a good article talking about just this in the magazine 'Dollars and Sense' right now. I think it's by Michael Perelman. It talks about how Management isn't really concerned with efficiency but rather with control. Intuitively it shouldn't come as any surprise I suppose that profits take a back seat to class control but it's nice to have specific cases where this has happened. A few of the first books by David F. Noble highlight this tendency very well I think.
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hilarious
By Small, Brian at Dec 18, 2009 04:49 AM
I can hear a construction worker actually saying that. It's the kind of reaction you have for someone who thinks 'their shit don't stink', or that 'they're the only guy in the world.'... If the ex-spurt is looking for efficiency 'well if it were up your ass you'd know where it was wouldn't you...' That expert is going to look pretty funny walking around all bowlegged after taking notes and sweeping the floor like that.. David Noble did Taylorism too didn't he?..
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