[lbo-talk] People today just don't have the work ethic they usedto!

[John Thornton]

As someone who works on cars (both old and new) as a hobby I can tell 
you the job of auto mechanic is as difficult on anything new as it is on 
something old.
Modern computerized systems still don't always give an accurate 
diagnosis of what is wrong with a vehicle.
If the engine management system gives a code for a faulty speed sensor 
it's easy enough to replace, depending on the make and model, but if all 
you get is a code for lean condition on bank one sensor one you can't 
just replace that sensor because that isn't the problem. You have to 
find the cause of the lean condition.
Working on my '60 Edsel is much easier than working on my friends '04 
Mustang but the skills needed for one don't always transfer to the other.
Old time skills like pulling and reading plugs haven't gone away but 
skills like carburetor adjustments are fading fast at large garages.
It's a ten minute job to replace the battery in my Edsel but a thirty 
minute job on a Chrysler Sebring.
I'll be dead long before auto mechanics are semi-skilled electronic 
parts replacers if that ever happens.

John Thornton

andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> Hey, Carrol, remember that an unfalsifiable hypothesis cannot qualify as science, you don't have to be very Popperian to believe that.  ;-> This has been going on in auto for decades, and no question that assembly work is far more intellectually demanding than it was in the 1930s or 1950s. I have been on many auto factories, old and new. The new ones look and operate like laboratories. Now it is true that as computers get cheaper auto mechanics may get to the point where they just have semi-skilled workers pulling and replacing electronic components. We'll see. Didn't happen in auto assembly.
>
> --- 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: andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com, lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 1:19 PM
>> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>>     
>>> Au contraire, computerization is increasing the
>>>       
>> intellectual demands of the jobs of auto mechanics, auto
>> workers, etc. My friends and comrades who work the line
>> have all had to learn computer systems, programming,
>> electronic repair, etc.; my auto mechanic says it's
>> hard to find good people because a good mechanic needs to
>> know computers now, not just mechanical systems.
>>
>> O.K. The trend has then not reached its full development. I
>> believe
>> computerization _usually_ at first proceeds as you have
>> described it
>> here, but then moves (more or less steadily) towards the
>> condition I
>> falsely assumed auto mechanics had reached. But in any case
>> I believe we
>> are in agreement that though the proportion varies, there
>> is no
>> occupation, probably in the nature of things cannot be an
>> occupation,
>> that makes no intellectual demands whatever on the worker,
>> reducing her
>> to (simply) a "cog." "Cog in the
>> machine" in reference to persons is a
>> useful metaphor but never empirically correct.
>>
>> Jan works on WebSphere (sp?) at State Farm. Don't ask
>> me what that is,
>> it's merely vital to almost every employee and agent at
>> State Farm that
>> it operate properly. And it continuallly fails to operate
>> properly and
>> thus requires highly skilled baby sitting. That level of
>> skill IS
>> however, after only a few years, detectably decreasing. I
>> don't know how
>> far it has to decrease before we can speak of the job as
>> (roughly)
>> "deskilled."
>>
>> Carrol