>Michael Pollak wrote:
>>But practically, isn't productivity actually about adding more value per
>>unit of work time *paid for?* In that sense, it is up; it's not
>>overstated. In which case Mr. Roach may have put his finger on exactly
>>where the rise in productivity comes from and how the information
>>revolution makes it possible. It's made it possible to get more unpaid
>work out of people.
>That's exploitation, not productivity!
>The bourgeois line is that higher productivity will lead to higher
>living standards. If there were a productivity miracle underway, we
>should be enjoying a great wage boom (and a loosening of fiscal
>stringency). We're seeing higher real wages, but no boom, and
>continued fiscal strigency. Corporate profitability (in the national
>income accounts) peaked in 1996 or 1997, so there's no evidence of a
>productivity miracle there either. The major effect of the
>"productivity boom" so far has been in the ideological realm, where
>U.S.-style k'ism is enjoying great prestige.
I read the article as spilling the beans. The so-called increase in productivity is actually greatly increased unpaid work. Interesting, because the overworked people are my cubicle mates.
That is what I saw in the workplace too. In my time, the most I carried back and forth to work was a briefcase. (When I began working, I carried a lunch pail, remember them?)
When I retired last year almost all the younger people carried laptops *and* airplane style suitcases on dollies. One young woman was staggering under her burden in the lobby while she rushed for the elevators in the morning.
I bitched in this email list about the beepers. Curse them. And if present workers don't carry beepers they carry cell phones.
The work day is now 10-12 hours at the cubicle, and several more at home. The beeper or the cell phone goes off, and you are awakened in the middle of the night for work. Cottage work is reborn with the laptop and the beeper.
I read the article as giving the lie to official statistics which rely on a totally fictitious number of hours for the work week.
As for real productivity, I suspect it has decreased. A salesman, for example, must now be his own Word expert, and futz with Word and Excel. Not only that, he is a Windows sysadmin. The laptop lets the company get rid of his supporters (the secretary, etc), and force it all on the salesman. It greatly increases his work while decreasing his available time for sales. Needless to say he doesn't do Word or Excel or Windows well, though he was once a good salesman.
The same goes for lower management.
-- Another damn, thick, square book. Always scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, eh, Mr. Gibbon? -- Duke of Gloucester.