40RD/IRO3
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY
Work, Power and the Labour
Process
INTRODUCTION
In
the introductory lecture last week we discussed the three quite distinct concepts, related to sets of practices:
Industrial Democracy, Workers Participation, Employee Involvement. Examined differences in terms of the degree,
depth, scope and purposes of these forms of participatory activity. One crucial question was the extent to which
workers/employees exercise genuine participation, that is to say real influence
over the decision making processes in organisations.
A
brief recapitulation on Industrial Democracy.
ID has been associated with the radical tradition, demands that have
arisen from the trade union and workers’ movement for more extensive and deeper
forms of employee control, implying a transformation in control and ownership
of industry. Despite the implementation of weaker forms of ID, bordering on workers’
participation, like Worker Directors, and despite the experiences of Workers’
Cooperatives, Industrial Democracy, at least in its fuller, radical version has
remained largely at the level of an aspiration.
Objectives not realised. Industrial Democracy, therefore, raises
questions about power relationships at work.
From what sources do these demands for worker control arise? What is it about the nature of work in a
capitalist, market economy that generates these demands for greater control?
STRUCTURE OF LECTURE
1)
Alienation
2)
The Labour Process (Harry Braverman – Labour and
Monopoly Capital, 1974) and Taylorism
3)
The Critique of Braverman
4)
Contemporary Examples of Taylorism
1) ALIENATION
Start
with a discussion of the extent to which work produces conditions of alienation
for employees. What is meant by the term
alienation? Alienation is a widely used
term, and one that is common in everyday language. Very flexible term, often used imprecisely to
mean no more than ‘pissed off’. However,
we have to go beyond common sense usage to an understanding of the term as it
is used in the social sciences. In terms
of industrial sociology there are two main, contending perspectives.
Marx on Alienation
In Marx’s writings
‘alienation’ is a product of the capitalist labour process and can not be
separated from the way in which work is performed. It is an unavoidable OBJECTIVE condition in
which all workers find themselves (see
Alienation
in two senses. (a) Time and again in
Capital, Marx describes the social relations of alienated work and their
destructive effects on the worker. :
‘[Under capitalism] all the means for developing production are transformed
into means of domination over and exploitation of the producer; that they
mutilate the worker into a fragment of a human being, degrade him to become a
mere appurtenance, make his work such a torment that its essential meaning is
destroyed’. As
Marx
argues that alienation has profound consequences for humanity. It is through work that people express
creativity, produce the means of their own existence and become
themselves. This creative process is one
of the two central purposes of life – production and reproduction – yet under
capitalism work becomes not a form of creative freedom but a form of
compulsion. The result is estrangement
and alienation. For Marx, this condition
of alienation is an objective state, under which all employees suffered. In a sense it matters little whether people
feel or say they are alienated since the assumption is that the structures of
capitalism determine the objective state of alienation.
Alienation as a Subjective Experience
Robert
Blauner’s book, Alienation and Freedom, 1964.
Blauner’s argument is that alienation is not solely an objective state
and that work has different meanings for different people. His perspective was sociological, or ‘social
psychological’. Began from the
proposition that ‘alienation is a general syndrome made up of a number of
different objective conditions and subjective feeling states (p.15).’ ‘…alienation is viewed as a quality of
personal experience which results from specific kinds of social arrangments’.
‘Alienation
exists where workers are unable to control their immediate work processes, to
develop a sense of purpose and function which connects their jobs to the
over-all organisation or production…and when they fail to become involved in
the activity of work as a mode of personal self-expression (p.15).’
The different objective
conditions and subjective feeling states emerge from certain relationships
between workers and the socio-technical settings of employment. For Blauner
alienation is multi-dimensional and can be broken down into four
dimensions : powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, self-estrangement. Different employees will be affected
differently by these dimensions and will therefore have different alienation
profiles, they will experience alienation differently. But Blauner was less concerned with looking
at the differences between individuals than the differences that existed
between entire occupational groups.
He
studies 4 different work settings : print shop, textile mill, automobile plant,
chemical manufacturing (continuous process).
Concluding on the pluralistic quality of American industrial life
affecting the worker,
‘His industry even affects the kind of social
personality he develops, since an industrial environment tends to breed a
distinctive social type.’
So although Blauner emphasises
subjectivity and is criticising Marx for an obejctive account of alienation, he
ended up, like Marx, in focusing on OBJECTIVE conditions which produced
alienation. Rather than generalise about
the capitalist system as the producer of alienation, he sought to differentiate
between capitalist enterprises on the basis of the technology used. The main criticism that can be levelled at
Blauner is that of technological determinism; a given level of technological development
will produce a certain level of alienation.
In Blauner’s perspective greater automation would free workers from the
drudgery of the assembly line and this would decrease alienation. An over-optimistic perspective.
It
is argued that Blauner’s major contribution is to make alienation a variable
concept. Certain objective conditions
can lead to feelings of non-alienation and conversely, non-alienation
conditions can still lead to feelings of alienation. Blauner allows for a range of feelings and
differences of experience even though work conditions may be shared.
Whatever
version of alienation one accepts, and it is not impossible to synthesise Marx
and Blauner, the focus on alienation raises the question of control, or lack of
it. In circumstances of active human
agency it is not difficult to see the root source of some of the demands for
industrial democracy – greater control over work, quality of working life (QWL)
etc.
2) THE LABOUR PROCESS
Starting point, Harry
Braverman – Labour and Monopoly Capital (1974).
This book with its subtitle ‘The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth
Century’ has had an immense impact, stimulating a debate which shows no sign of
abating. See for example Smith and
Thompson (1998) in reading list. And International studies of Management and Organization
Winter 2000-2001/ Vol: 30, No:4. As we shall see Braverman’s
work has been criticised from a number of standpoints, but remains a truly
important work.
B.
wrote the book out of an initial interest in the way occupational shifts were
taking place in the US in the 1970s – in particular the growth in numbers of
white-colllar workers and workers in the service industries. He became aware of a contradiction. On the one hand, widespread claims were being
made that modern work was, because of the scientific-technical revolution and
‘automation’, demanding higher levels of education, training and intelligence,
yet, on the other hand, there was considerable evidence of growing
dissatisfaction with work, both in the factory (long acknowledged) and in the office.
His
argument – work has become increasingly subdivided into petty operations that
fail to sustain the interest or engage the capacities of humans. These petty operations actually demand even
less skill and training ‘and that the modern trend of work by its
‘mindlessness’ and ‘bureaucratisation’ is ‘alienating’ ever large sections of
the working population’ (p.4) B’s
perspective avowedly Marxist. The drive
to accumulate capital transforms the way in which work has been organised.
Braverman’s
Thesis. With the development of
capitalist production, workers are separated from the means of production. They only get access to the means of
production through selling their labour power.
What the worker sells and what the capitalist buys is not an agreed
amount of labour, but the power to labour over a period of time. Relationships at work are fundamentally
unequal. Having been forced to sell
their labour power to the employer the workers also surrender their interest in
the labour process. And for the employer
the central task becomes one where he has to take control of the labour
process. Control becomes the central
concept of all management systems.
The
all-round skills of the craftsman are broken down into individual component
parts. Adam Smith and pin
manufacture. Cheaper and more
efficient. Conception and execution are
separated. The key changes are brought
about by the purposive and systematic application of ‘science’ to
production. Much of B’s book is
concerned with a discussion of F.W. Taylor and the Scientific Management
Movement. There was one best way of
doing things, and even the most complex of tasks could and should be broken
down into their most simple component parts.
Work should be measured, observed, timed to fractions of a second if
necessary, and each stage of the work should be precisely controlled by
management. Taylor’s experiments. Schmidt – the example of.
Taylor’s Principles
First Principle – Managers
must assume the task of gathering together all the traditional knowledge which
in the past has been possessed by workmen, take that knowledge and reduce it to
formulae, rules, laws. THE DISSOCIATION
OF THE LABOUR PROCESS FROM THE SKILLS OF THE WORKERS.
Second
Principle – All possible brain work should be removed from the shop and centred
in the planning or laying-out departments.
THE SEPARATION OF CONCEPTION FROM EXECUTION.
Third
Principle – The use of this MONOPOLY OVER KNOWLEDGE TO CONTROL EACH STEP OF THE
LABOUR PROCESS AND ITS MODE OF EXECUTION. CONSEQUENCE – THE CREATION OF THE
MODERN OFFICE as knowledge is centred there.
But in the office the same process takes place as took place on the shop
floor. From the early clerks to the
subdivision of tasks and the fragementation and routinisation of office
work. (see, for example, Cooper, C. and
Taylor, P. (2000) ‘From Taylorism to Mrs Taylor : the transformation of the
accounting craft’ in Accounting, Organizations and Society 25, 555-578)
The
debate on B. has frequently focused on B.’s proposition that a process of
deskilling has taken place, both organisationally and technologically. Automation and the introduction of new
technology has increased the level of deskilling. B. focuses on the operation of machines by
Numerical Control, where planning and programming of machines was undertaken
away from the shopfloor by technical staff.
Machines pre-programmed, the pace of the machine dictated from a
distance.
3) CRITICISM OF BRAVERMAN
Often
the debate has focused, not wholly correctly, on deskilling. For purposes of simplicity, summarise the 6
types of criticism that have been levelled at Braverman, as categorised by Noon
and Blyton.
1)
The deskilling thesis ignores alternative
management strategies. Andrew Friedman
in two books has argued that there is no single trend to deskilling. Managers pursue strategies that leave some
discretion in the hands of the employees.
A strategy of ‘responsible autonomy’ rather than ‘direct control’ e.g..
job enrichment, quality circles, empowerment.
Wider choice in the mechanisms employed by managers for the accumulation
of capital.
2)
Deskilling
thesis overstates management’s objective of controlling labour. The control of labour and labour process, not
an end in itself, but a means to achieve profit. Also, the assumption that labour issues,
rather than product development, marketing, investment are the central concerns
of management is highly questionable.
3)
Deskilling thesis treats labour as passive. Resistance, subjectivity, influence of the
post-modernists.
4)
Underestimates the degree of consent and
accommodation by employees. The work of
Burawoy stands as an important corrective.
He looks at why workforces consent to their own subordination. ‘Making Out’,
CONTROL and CONSENT.
Contradiction in the management of the labour process. Richard Hyman – Strategy or Structure? Work, Employment and Society 1.1. Management have two competing pressures. On the one hand to control and direct
employees, on the other to enlist the skills and cooperation of these workers
in making these targets. Harness and
control too much and stop creativity.
Supervision X discretion.
5)
B. ignores gender dimensions.
6)
Deskilling may be compensated for by enskilling
4)
Contemporary Examples
Depite
changes, the prevalence of forms of Taylorism.
Ritzer,
the McDonaldization of Society.
Chickens
– disassembly line
Call
centres – an assembly line in the head
Checkout
operators
Widespread
and enduring significance of Taylorism in the way work is organised.
PT