However it is decreasing the number of jobs! I have a friend from my old days, industrialized, went into auto, fail to bring the revo to the working class, our group evaporated, he managed to hang on to his auto job by the skin of his teeth when they automated his plant (subsequently shut) by becoming a repair guy for the robots that replaced the line workers. Which he still does, now for a different company.
--- On Tue, 6/10/08, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] People today just don't have the work ethic they usedto!
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 12:20 PM
> Andy F wrote:
> >
> >
> > How does this hold up in the face of deskilling? I
> have no problem
> > believing it for a job needing the slightest bit of
> brainpower, but
> > when you're just being a cog in the machine....
>
> You greatly overestimate how absolute the division of
> mental and manual
> labor can be. 'They' have neveer yet succeeded in
> creating a job which
> (a) needs a person to perform it and (b) needs that person
> ONLY as a
> cog. Human intelligence is required in the most cog-like
> positions:
> hence the immense power of "work to rule" by
> "unskilled" workers. ALL
> jobs require more or less constant mental input.
>
> Carrol
>
> P.S. In a recent thread "auto mechanic" was given
> as an example of
> "manual labor"; granted that job usually
> requires, incidentally, quite a
> bit of manual effort, but it should be primarily listed as
> mental labor
> -- and this has been the case since the earliest days of
> the auto.
> Computerized systems in cars are reducing but not really
> eliminating the
> intellectual demands of the job.
>
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