Work and Employment (1967)

From the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fortunate indeed is the man who gains his livelihood by performing a task that he enjoys. Millions, born of working class parents, are condemned to earn their living by doing jobs that, at best, they can tolerate or, at worst, they hate.

Workers from birth, by teaching and training, are blinkered from sight of an alternative to a life of work for wages. High wages and security of employment become their life’s target. Boyhood dreams of a life devoted to some sensational, romantic or interesting occupation turn out to be—just boyhood dreams.

There is a tendency to confuse work with employment. The terms are used haphazardly, ‘Work’ being used when ‘Employment’ is meant, and vice versa. Work is the effort used to overcome a resistance, it is the expenditure of physical and mental energey. Employment is work performed in someone else’s service. All employment is work but all work is not employment. Work, in itself, can be enjoyable, employment seldom is. That is why millions go reluctantly to their employment and hasten away from it to seek pleasure in some form of work.

After five days in an office or factory, on a lorry or down a mine, workers will devote their week-end leisure to gardening, driving a car, some do-it-yourself occupation or a strenuous sport.

Why, then, does work, when it is employment, become distasteful? How does employment contaminate work and make it unpalatable?

The elements which make work enjoyable are, variety, the exercise of the worker’s initiative and intelligence, the satisfaction of creating something, and pride in the product. Remove one of these elements and the pleasure diminishes. Remove them all and it vanishes, the work becomes tedious.

A few centuries of capitalism have succeeded in eliminating those elements from the work men do for their livelihood by making employees of practically all workers.

Capitalism is a system where wealth is produced essentially for a market with a view to profit. The market is competitive and the competition exerts a continuous downward pressure on the cost of production, resulting in the introduction of ever more and more labour saving devices and more intense methods of production. Employees are coerced to produce more commodities in quicker time for the minimum possible total wage cost. Labour saving machinery ousts the craftsman. The division and sub-division of labour increases productivity but creates an army of semi and un-skilled workers doing repetitive jobs. The worker becomes proficient, not by the exercise of his initiative and intelligence, but by the continual repetition of a task.

Professor Charles Babbage, a nineteenth century mathematician, who devised a mechanical computing machine and who was a forthright apologist of capitalism, stated,

“. .. the most important principle on which the economy of a manufacture depends, is the division of labour amongst the persons who perform the work. 

… If, however, instead of learning all the different processes his (the worker’s) attention be confined to one operation, a very small portion of his time will be consumed unprofitably at the commencement, and the whole of the rest of it will be beneficial to his master.”

Sixty years later Henry Ford in his, My Life and Work, was able to show the application of the idea.

“With one workman doing a job he could turn out from thirty-five to forty pieces in a nine hour day, or about twenty minutes to an assembly. What he did alone was then spread into twenty-nine operations. That cut down assembly time to thirteen minutes, ten seconds. Then we raised the height of the line eight inches—this was in 1914—and cut the time to seven minutes. 

… we began to departmentalise so that each department would do only one thing … I did not know that such minute divisions would be possible; but as our production grew and departments multiplied we actually changed from making automobiles to making parts.”

The development of this process has varied in different trades and industries. For generations clerical workers considered themselves immune from its effects, but the typewriter, the adding machine, the electric Hollerith calculator, and the electronic computer have brought home to them with a vengeance the realisation that capitalism works on them in the same way that it works on their manual labouring colleagues.

Variety of task is almost extinct. Demands on most workers’ initiative and intelligence are low. The final product of his labour is so remote that interest in it has waned almost to vanishing point. During his hours of employment his attention is divided between his task and the clock and his interest is focussed on finishing time and pay day.

This is not a condemnation of machinery. Machines enable men to avoid many laborious tasks. Without machines society would not be able to enjoy many of the comforts and luxuries of modern living. The evil lies not in the machine itself, but in its ownership by an exploiting class who introduce it only when it serves their profit-making ends.

Employers introduce labour saving machinery, not to lighten the labour of their workers, but to cheapen it. The workers have had to fight every step of the way to achieve the shorter working hours which machines have made possible. Every gain by the workers of shorter hours is an incentive to their employers to instal more labour saving devices.

Modern automative machinery does not sub-divide labour processes into smaller units. It takes over batches of consecutive labour units and performs them mechanically with a minimum of human aid.

At the end of last February the British Computer Society held a symposium in London. The talks dealt with computer operations applied to grocery, brewery, tobacco, fashion goods, departmental stores and bakery trades. Automation introduced by the American bakery firm of Sara Lee was discussed and reported in the April issue of the Transport and General Workers’ Union journal, The Record.

This bakery produces fifteen different products which are frozen immediately after baking. On the bakery side the computer monitors raw materials, liquid and dry, including eggs, and weighs and mixes the ingredients.

“The cakes are baked in foil, packed in cartons and conveyed automatically to the warehouse.

Each carton surface has a “bar code” which decides the route that it shall follow. The cartons are tripped off the conveyor and pallet loading is automatically controlled by the computer, each tier is picked up by a suction head crane and stacked on the pallet. The warehouse contains eight of these suction head cranes. A loaded pallet consists of 80 cartons, which is then picked up by one of five stacker cranes and randomly stored in one of the ten racks in the warehouse. Each rack contains 5,310 individual cubicles. The computer memorises information concerning the whereabouts of each pallet load and when goods are being despatched it sends the stacker crane to pick up the appropriate quantities of each product. The computer sorts out the load and sends it to the despatching area where for the first time it makes contact with human beings who check the order and load on to the delivery vehicles. The computer records all products in and out and gives a rundown of stocks every quarter of an hour on tape.”

A reduced number of workers programme the computer and serve as a human check on mechanical accidents; they are adjuncts of the machinery. Their interest in the product is so remote as to be almost non-existent. They see and handle only the cases in which it is packed and the sheets of paper showing production data and marketing statistics.

Everything that gave the craftsman pleasure, satisfaction and pride in production is gone. Employment has made work a routine and often boring task. Physical effort is reduced, mental stress is increased.

The ideas of millions of workers are confined within limits set by the present social system. They conceive of no alternative to a wages system and, as discontent is a nagging sensation, they subdue it and become resigned to a life of employment. They look forward with pleasant anticipation to their daily leisure time relaxation, their week-end rejuvenation and their annual holiday recreation.

A word that has climbed the charts of the English languague is “Escapism”. Originally coined by psycho-analysts to define the attitude of mind of people who seek to avoid unpleasant realities by withdrawing into a world of fantasy, the term has assumed a wider application to include those who seek temporary escape from boring or harrassing life by concentrating on more pleasant activities or subjects for thought.

The workers’ week-ends and holidays are not so much times for rest as periods of “Escapism”, that offer the variety and interest denied them during their hours of employment.

Socialism, by ending the private ownership of the means of wealth production, will end work for wages and the division of society into an employing class and an employed class. Millions now employed in defending private property, calculating profits, seeking markets or in other socially unnecessary tasks, will be released for productive work. Machinery will be used to lighten or eliminate the more obnoxious or laborious tasks. When profit is no longer the motive for production all people will have the opportunity for a more varied experience and will be able to regain an interest in the productive process.

When men are no longer exploited by employers and can go to work with a light step and a smile in pleasant anticipation of an interesting day, leisure time and holidays will assume less importance in their lives.

W. E. Waters