Doug Henwood said in reply to Patrick Bond:
I've said this many times, but that's never stopped me from saying it again. If the left project is so dependent on crisis to do our polemical work for us, then we're doomed. If we can't convince people that the normal operation of capitalism is unjust, violent, alienating, polarizing, etc., then we might as well give up. Because crises do resolve themselves, but the rest goes on. The "normal" should be the issue, not the extraordinary. I said the following a few months ago, in Monthly Review:
You may have heard it said that “the only thing worse than having a job is not having one.” This is true, but what does it say about work? Work in capitalism is a traumatic affair. We all have the capacity to conceptualize what we do before we do it. This capability, when applied to work, has allowed human beings to transform the world around them in profound ways: to invent tools and machines and to socially divide our labor so that the riches of the earth can be unlocked and a cornucopia of output produced. As we have done these things, we have also transformed ourselves, becoming ever more conscious of causes and effects and better able to understand the world. Put another way, our capacity to think and to do makes us human. It is integral to our being.
In capitalism, which, because it divorces the masses of people from direct connection to the means of production and therefore allows owners to claim no responsibility for workers, can be considered the perfection of class society, this human mastery of the physical world is reserved for only a few. The capacity to think and to do implies control, and control by workers cannot be contemplated by capitalists. In fact, the essence of management in capitalism is the monopolization of control by the owners, control especially of the labor process—the work—and its denial to the workers.
We don’t have time today to discuss all the various “control tactics” used by employers: the herding of workers into factories, the detailed division of labor, mechanization, Taylorism, personnel management, lean production—all of which deny workers their humanity, their capacity to conceptualize and carry out their plans, to actually “own’ what they make. However, let us look at a sampling of jobs in modern America:
Auto workers: There are about 1.1 million auto workers. Not only are they facing rapidly rising insecurity, they are also confronted every day with a work regimen so Taylorized that they must work fifty-seven of every sixty seconds. What must this be like? What does it do to mind and body? As professor Lisa Henderson of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst tells her students, this is like having a deadline to meet every minute of the day for eight hours. No wonder critics call the system of job engineering that demands this kind of labor “management by stress.” this In this connection, it is instructive to read Ben Hamper’s Rivethead, a startling account of working in auto plants. Hamper worked in an old plant, where the norm was about forty-five seconds of work each minute. He eventually got a job in a new, “lean production” facility. He called it a “gulag.” In her book, On the Line at Subaru-Isuzu, sociologist Laurie Graham, tells us about her work routine in one of these gulags. I have skipped a lot of the steps, because I just want to give readers an idea of the work. Remember as you read it that the line is relentlessly moving while she is working:
1. Go to the car and take the token card off a wire on the front of the car. 2. Pick up the 2 VIN (vehicle identification number) plates from the embosser and check the plates to see that they have the same number. 3. Insert the token card into the token card reader. 4. While waiting for the computer output, break down the key kit for the car by pulling the 3 lock cylinders and the lock code from the bag. 5. Copy the vehicle control number and color number onto the appearance check sheet. . . . 8. Lift the hood and put the hod jig in place so it will hold the hood open while installing the hood stay. . . . 22. Rivet the large VIN plate to the left-hand center pillar. 23. Begin with step one on the next car.
This work is so intense that it is not possible to steal a break much less learn your work mate’s job so that you can double-up, then rest while she does both jobs. Within six months of the plant’s start-up, a majority of the workers had to wear wrist splints for incipient carpal tunnel. Necks and backs ache from bodies being twisted into unnatural positions for eight hours a day. Supervisors recommend exercises and suggest that workers who can’t deal with the pain are sissies.
What is true for auto workers is true for all who do this type of labor—whether it be in beef processing plants or on chicken disassembly lines. In these latter workers labor in slippery blood and gore, on the floor and on their bodies. Cuts lead to infections and disease.
Clerks: There are about 15 million clerks in the United States. Many years ago I was on a television show with former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. In response to my claim that a lot of the jobs being created were not all that desirable, he said that there were a lot of good jobs available, ones in which workers had a real say about their jobs (no doubt referring to the “quality circles” so popular then). One such job was that of “clerk.” I blurted out in a loud and incredulous voice, CLERKS! I suggested that perhaps Mr. Reich had never noticed the splints on the writs of many clerks, signs of epidemic carpal tunnel syndrome. Since that time, I have actually worked as a clerk, at the Lake Hotel in Yellowstone National Park. I describe the experience and what I learned in my book Cheap Motels and Hot Plate: an Economist’s Travelogue. Clerks work long hours; they are on their feet all day; they take regular abuse from customers; they are exposed in full view of supervisors with no place to hide; they are accorded no respect (think about customers on cell phones in grocery lines); their pay is low; their benefits negligible. After a hard day at the front desk, I only wanted a few drinks and a warm bed. The stress level was extraordinary.
Restaurant workers: There are 11 million of these, growing in number every year. Next to personal care and service workers, those that prepare and serve our food are most likely to experience “a major depressive episode.” Restaurant workers in Manhattan’s Chinatown log as many as one hundred hours a week, for less than minimum wage. The pace of the work, the pressure of it are unbelievable. Check out the arms and legs of a kitchen worker. They are full of cuts and burns. Substance abuse is widespread.
Secretaries, Administrative Assistants, and Office Support: These are 23 million strong. Poorly paid, many in sick buildings, stuck in badly designed chairs, staring at computer screens for hours, taking orders all day long, (usually women from men), often heavily Taylorized, these workers, satirized so skillfully on the television series The Office, have to contend with daily degradations, including all too prevalent sexual harassment. Here is what my sister said about her work:
I, too, share some of your fears and anxieties. As one of the administrative assistants you talk about, I can relate to the long days of sitting at the typewriter (in years past) and now at the computer. I am sure that is the cause of my neck and shoulder pain and the many headaches from which I suffer. Although I basically like my job and the people with whom I work, after thirty years I am anxious to move on to something else. I look forward to retirement in about three to four years, moving to the city, maybe working part-time, and finding meaningful things in which to participate.
Security workers: Three million men and women watching over others, in prisons, in malls, in gated communities, in Iraq, on our city streets. This is a type of work guaranteed to be stressful and to generate an extremely jaundiced and pejorative view of the rest of society. Not to mention an extreme, macho personality, prone to violence.
Custodial workers: There are four million building and grounds workers, many of them immigrants, keeping our buildings clean and the grounds swept and manicured. Often they are hired by contractors who are themselves employed by the buildings’ owners. It has taken monumental efforts by the SEIU to organize some of these exploited workers, who must often labor in close proximity to dangerous cleaning fluids, solvents, and chemical fertilizers.
Medical workers: There are more than 13 million people laboring in our hospitals, urgi-care centers, and nursing homes, as well as in individual residences. With the exception of those at the top, including healthcare administrators and most of the physicians, health care is a minefield of poor working conditions. Even nursing has been degraded and deskilled so much that the nursing shortage could be nearly filled simply by the return of disaffected nurses to their profession. At the request of the California Nurses Association, I spoke this summer to nurses in four Texas cities. I heard many tales of woe: sixteen hour days, two weeks straight of twelve-hour days, insane patient loads, constant cost-cutting that damages patient health, demeaning treatment by administrators, etc. Conditions only worsen as one goes down the healthcare occupation ladder.
Work takes its toll on mind and body. It saps our creativity, bores us to death, makes us anxious, encourages us to be manipulative, alienates us in multiple ways (from coworkers, from products, from ourselves), makes us party to the production of debased and dangerous products, subjects us to arbitrary authority, makes us sick, injures us. I remember my dad saying, when emphysema (the result of too many cigarettes, too much asbestos, and too much silica dust) had sapped his health, that he hadn’t expected retirement to be like this. He and how many hundreds of million others? It is not the CEO who suffers depression, hypertension, and heart attacks from being too long on the job; it is instead the assembly line worker, the secretary, the kitchen laborer. Those who can’t control their work hurt the most. And with all of these injuries of class, I haven’t even touched upon the compound misery endured by black workers, by Hispanic workers, by women workers, by gay workers, by workers without the proper national documents. And I have not described some of the worst types of labor: farm labor, domestic work, labor in recycling plants, and many others, which get truly demonic as we move outside the rich nations and into the poor ones. It is no wonder that people don’t need much convincing to believe that happiness lies not in the workplace but in the shopping mall. Michael Yates