I’m on vacation for a couple of weeks but wanted to share some thoughts on the latest corporate efforts to depersonalize, isolate and turn even white-collar workers into cogs in the machine.

One of the stale arguments against unions regurgitated by anti-worker organizations is that today’s white-collar employees no longer need the benefits of unionization because conditions at their workplaces are so different from the industrial shop floor.

Not so.

As Simon Head writes in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books (cost involved for the full article), where he overviews recent publications on the effects of the digital revolution at the workplace:

…the findings of the three books under review here, along with much recent research, suggest that methods of production based on top-down standardization and tight control of work are as influential in the digital economy as they were in the industrial economy. Drawing upon the virtually unlimited powers of computers to monitor the activities of employees and their use of information, these methods have simply been readapted for the white-collar workplace.

Head, a senior fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford, says for proof of these assertions, we only have to look as far as the nearest Wal-Mart, which “has demonstrated the effectiveness of applying industrial principles to the retail economy.”

It does so by combining an intensive use of information technology, a rapid growth of employee productivity and a harsh, often punitive work regime that keeps even the most productive workers off balance and their wages at poverty levels.

Further, the Wal-Mart approach is being driven by technologies known as “enterprise systems,” or ES, which bring together computer hardware and software to standardize and then monitor the entire range of tasks done by a company’s workforce. Head reviews Richard Sennett’s The Culture of the New Capitalism, which describes the widespread use of enterprise systems—well beyond the retail world—and how ES has given top managers much greater latitude to direct and control corporate workforces, while at the same time making the jobs of wage workers and professionals more rigid and bleak. Here, Head highlights an example from the book:

At call center companies such as AmTech and TeleTech, call center companies to whom many corporations outsource their “customer relations management,” agents must follow a script displayed on their computer screens, spelling out the exact conversation, word for word, they must follow in their dealings with customers. Monitoring devices track every fact of their work: minutes spent per call, minutes spent going to the bathroom. At the same time managers can speed up or reconfigure this digital assembly line simply by throwing a switch and reprogramming the software—specifying less time per call and between calls—much as Henry Ford controlled the line at his Detroit plants in the 1920s.

In fact, just as the enterprise system was introduced at the turn of this century, so “Taylorism” was rolled out at the turn of the 20th century as a break-through method of controlling workers. In 1911, Frederick Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management became the corporate bible, introducing a massive shift in workplace production, the most revolutionary of which standardized “task allocation.” That is, breaking one task into smaller and smaller tasks. Taylorism created efficiency—and isolated workers from participation in the creation of a whole product. Taylorism’s hierarchical system furthered the move toward workers’ role as “cogs in a machine” and centralized control at the top. 

Taylorism was not a passing phase, and neither should any of us presume enterprise systems will remain limited to call center and retail workers. In discussing author Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest book, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, in which she pretends to be an ex-manager seeking a job, Head notes that at no point did the “career coaches” Ehrenreich consulted try to assess her abilities by finding out how she would deal with actual problems. Useless as measures of ability and experience, these tests instead are reliable indicators of those who are “cheerful, enthusiastic and obedient.” Although Head notes that Ehrenreich seems puzzled why the “transition industry” and “by implication, corporate America itself is so little interested in the skills of its workforce,” he finds the reason pretty clear.

…for corporate managers, the attraction of white-collar industrialization is that it adds to the productivity of workers without adding to their skills or their earning power. From a management perspective it is the best of all possible worlds, allowing companies such as Wal-Mart to improve their profit margins while keeping labor costs low. Too often, it is intelligent and valuable employees who pay the price for these changes; they lead increasingly insecure and anxious professional lives that no longer provide a reliable flow of income and benefits. 

That’s one reason the slogan, “Danger: Educated Union Member” makes a lot of sense. And why unionization at 21st century workplaces makes the most sense of all.

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