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Managing Workers: The Early Years:

Introduction to Topic One.

          The application of science to industry, including agriculture, has produced at least as much effect on our lives in the last 300 years as anything else. It has helped to produce more goods, increased production; and it has helped to produce more efficiently, and increased productivity. There are questions about what has been produced, atom bombs, effects of pollution etc.. This has even prompted questions about returning to pre-industrial forms of production, producing crops without pesticides etc.. These are questions about production itself, and they are important. However there are also questions about how goods and services are produced. These are questions around efficiency, productivity; and how human beings' working lives are organised.

          It is the second of these two questions that is addressed here. We start by looking at changes in America at the end of the Nineteenth century. This is a dramatic moment, and has its dramatic hero/anti-hero, F.W.Taylor. But changes in the organisation of work are a long term historical trend. The feudal organisation of work into traditional trades, was itself based on workers such as those in the building trades involved in the ancient Egyptian pyramids. At the beginning of the twenty first century there is a question about the very existence of trades. Apprenticeships have changed into various youth work schemes. Taylor can be seen as standing at the beginning of these changes.

          These early changes in the organisation of work not only increased productivity, but were associated with many new products from the motor car to toothpaste. Further, as you move through the twentieth century these new products start to improve in quality. The cars break down less, and the tooth paste flows more easily from the tube. The consumer has benefited. This line of thinking can lead to a celebration of the status quo, to a utopian, almost religious, celebration of the changes wrought on industry by science.

          Another view of these changes sees the destruction of the ancient trades as a real loss to humanity; a loss of craft pride, the master craftsman is replaced by more formal training, on the job. The point to consider here is the consequences of these early twentieth century increases in productivity. Who benefits, and who loses? Can anyone object to increases in productivity? Taylor’s answer to who benefits was the worker. The faster workers would get higher bonuses; other workers would get a fair wage. What is a fair wage is well discussed by Michael Rose in the following excerpt.

Taylor had an East Coast middle class Quaker childhood. He believed in “Original Sin”; that is the belief that humans are somehow tainted with behaviour which potentially sinful. To investigate this amongst manual workers at the end of the 19^th century he worked in a number of manual trades. He also worked as a supervisor, or foreman. He learned some of the “trade secrets” of these workers. He discovered “malingering”, faking illness; and “soldering” slowing down the speed of production. This information was published in his magnum opus “Scientific Management”. He addressed Government and management, and advised managers to take more control of production by measuring the detailed movements of hand and eye in specific work tasks over time.

Over 25 years an enormous amount of data was collected. He then argued that there was “one right way” to do any task. Once discovered all workers wee encouraged to work in this way with pay incentives. Work became standardised; as opposed to the feudal organisation of skills, where each trade controlled its own part of the task, and then passed on to another trade. Standardisation meant that any worker could be trained to do any task. This produced maximum interchange ability amongst workers.

It also removed the need for traditional crafts/skills, as the detailed analysis produced by Taylor meant that each task was reduced to a number of movements, which any worker could be trained to do. It also gave more control over production to managers, who could now control the speed of the production line as there were no longer any secrets. Hence Taylor became known as “Speedy Taylor”.

Taylor’s influence was not only in America , but also in Europe, Japan, and the new Soviet Russia. The increase in productivity was seen as attractive by societies wanting to be modern; meaning having a large industrial sector in the economy, and not just agriculture. Indeed, agriculture itself could itself be industrialised!

Jobs in the new industries in the early 20^th century were attractive. Especially when located in primarily agricultural areas. Firstly, they provided an alternative to farming work. Secondly, wages were set  slightly above agricultural rates of pay. Thirdly, one was part of a new modern way of life. 

Taylor’s assumption that people were primarily motivated by money was the first criticism of the next theory from the middle years of the 20^th century.

The next early theory was called Human Relations. This was, in part, a response to the conflicts resulting from Scientific Management. There was reaction from workers, and managers. The managers were seen by Taylor as the larger part of the problem.  This was because they were holding on to older, more feudal methods; accepting the foreman as the person who controlled wages for individual workers. The foreman received a block sum of money to be distributed amongst the workers. Also, the managers did not care for the detailed analysis of their own working time, as well as the factory workers. More fundamentally they did not share one of Taylor’s key assumptions, that workers were mainly motivated by money.  Human Relations denied this, and asserted that motivation came from informal small work groups which had good communication within the group. Where conflict did exist at work this was because of poor communication between workers, and more importantly between managers and workers.

          This theory was more popular with managers as it portrayed the workers as emotional, as easily led by the group; whereas the managers were more cool, even more rational. Their managerial role was to manage the group with non-monetary rewards. These rewards involved group participation in decision making about the working environment, expressive or friendly supervision, etc.. The expectation was that this would improve worker’s morale, and productivity. Very similar questions, to those raised by Scientific Management, were raised again!

So both theories were concerned to increase productivity; albeit in radically different ways.  For Human Relation theorists workers reacted to managerial initiatives as a group; not as individuals. More abstractly, workers were seen as social animals, rather than economic animals. Workers needed non-monetary rewards. They needed a sense of belonging. This was to be provided by small work groups about 6 to 12 members, which created a set of informal relations within the group; and provided the sense of belonging.

Then certain techniques were used to increase productivity. Good communications was very important within the group; but also from management to the informal group. This was expected to increase the morale of the group. Secondly, the group should be involved in decision making about any changes. Thirdly, supervision by managers was to be democratic and expressive; or more simply friendly.

Where conflict existed within or without of the group, this was explained by poor communication. In particular, poor communication from management was seen as being of major importance. So conflict was a consequence of poor communication by managers. This makes managers responsible for conflict, as did Taylor but in a very different manner.

The influence of Human Relations was partly due to the efforts of Professor Elton Mayo at Harvard University bringing the results of certain experiments in a factory to influential people; but also to the inherent interest in the experiments themselves. The methods of research changed over a number of years. A recent study, by R. Gillespie, documents in detail some major changes, and some “howlers”. One howler was the removal of two Polish workers from a small experimental group for being uncooperative. This calls into question the finding that all workers were looking for belongingness. Further, the nature of their lack of cooperation was refusing instructions from researchers, some of whom were also supervisors. In particular the two Polish workers threatened to maintain production at existing levels. This did not have to end the experiment, as their behaviour could have been compared with those workers who did accept instructions.

A more serious issue was trade unionism. There was no trade union is the factory where the experiments took place, at least when the experiments started. There were trade unions in other nearby factories. Had these factories been chosen for the experiments the behaviour of the two Poles might have been more common. Most workers were recent immigrants and may have been more obedient than workers with a trade union organisation in place.

However, despite these later criticisms, in the 1920’s and 1930’s there appeared to be a lot of “good news” for managers and industrialists from the experiments. Specifically, the experiments seemed to show that productivity could be made to rise in a great variety of ways. Firstly, the lighting was increased, decreased, and held constant at different periods. In all cases productivity increased. The same happened when natural daylight was varied with artificial light.

Next groups of friends were self selected, and their pay was varied; their rest periods were varied; the length of the working day was varied; Saturday morning work was stopped. Then after some weeks of  these changes workers were put back to the original conditions at the start of the experiments. Amazingly, to the experimenters at least, with every change productivity rose. This became known as the “Hawthorne Effect”.

A variety of explanations were given to deal with these results, including abandoning one experiment. Cohesive friendly informal work groups, sometimes based on kin relations, were seen as what increased productivity. The mere presence of researchers from a prestigious university taking an interest in the lives of workers, with in depth interviews, was another cause. Good communications from inside the group, and from outside it to supervisors, was also a popular explanation.

When the researchers left the factory in 1937 production returned to previous levels, before the experiments started. One important consequence of these experiments was the creation of a new occupational group, once known as Personnel Managers; now known as Human Resource managers. Until the last 2 decades of the 20^th century Personnel was seen as the human face of the firm. The concern was with the individual’s family life, illnesses, etc.. With Human Resources the stress returned to the firm, with the individual seen as a resource, who could be trained in new skills, and become a more important resource. It could be argued that this is a return to Human Relations, where the factory was as, or more, important than the family. Current research on stress at work, long hours, and job insecurity point to a growing concern about family life being seen as less important to society than paid work.

Put differently, where does one belong more, at home or in paid work?

Another way of putting the above criticism of workers as cows is to say that the experiments showed workers as behaving very passively in the experiments. They were pawns in a game they did not understand. Yet the data from the experiments did show some workers as very active indeed. They were even given names by their fellow workers. They were called “chisellers” and “rate-busters”. Chisellers persistently under produced, but falsely reported themselves to the supervisor a achieving the norm. Rate-busters persistently over produced  beyond the norm, and were castigated by their peers.

This can be understood in a variety of ways. It can be seen as workers taking some control over their working lives in both cases. I can be seen as showing a clear concept as to what constitutes a fair day’s work; or even a fair day’s pay. In any case it shows a confidence to go against the experimenter/supervisor; even when he was in the same room much of the time. These two types of worker were able to some extent to manage the supervisor. They did not have a clear understanding of the complex pay structure, but they did have a sense of a fair day’s pay.

What chisellers and rate-busters show most clearly is that these small informal friendly work groups had their internal tensions within the group, and even between the group and the supervisor. There was even some suggestion that the supervisor colluded with the “fiddles” of these two types of worker.

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Deskilling Thesis