Why wouldn't it be considered production? Carrol
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I associate production with mass production on a `line'. Or also off a line but at a station running a machine.
It was just a detail in my mind. I didn't have it as bad as those guys on the line or the guys in Michael Yates's glass factory. This glass factory was probably PPG.
I was in a very interesting trade because it started inside a federal project as a needed skill and service that was not being met by the existing service delivery model. Then service delivery model was privatized into small shops inside a medical equipment dealership---when fed money ran out and was cut back.
My wage dropped nearly half by 1982. The work load nearly doubled. No paid for healthcare. Five federal holidays a year off with pay. Five days paid vacation after one year of work, full time. Ten days after three years. Sick leave was deducted from vacation days. Punched in on a time clock 8 to 5. Fifteen minute break at 10a and 3p. One half hour lunch. The work day was partitioned into seven, one hour slots. One hour for either a repair or a new chair build. Two hours if the build was complex or the repair was extensive, on prior approval by the supervisor.
I was the second fastest worker. The fastest guy was half my age, basically young enough to be my son. We worked in small 10 x 10 foot stalls. The boss's office was upstairs and overlooked the entire work area. He had his desk positioned so that all he had to do was turn his head to see us. Talking and joking wasn't formally forbidden, but was seriously frowned on. You could be fired for telling another employee what you got paid or comparing pay stubs.
I had worked other places which were never this obnoxious. So what started off as what I thought was a pretty cool job almost forty years earlier and a real service was turned into a sweat shop. One guy who followed the same course and often worked in the same places I did, got sick with the flu, came into work, came down with pneumonia, stayed in the ICU for six months and came out with sever lung damage, and brain damage. He can still walk and talk, but he is not the same guy I knew all those years. So capitalism will kill you outright, if you let your guard down.
I got to study the entire economic system in this little model. When I tried to get out of this trade I was too old at thirty-six and again in my early fifties. So, I had to ride this nightmare all the way home. Relative to inflation, I was about 25 percent above where I started in private about twenty-five years before.
When the boss sold the business because it was going broke, he expected a going away party. None materialized. The lead sales woman who usually organized these `spontaneous' little work parties, didn't bother. The old boss stayed on under a six month contract for a transistion. He got laid off two months earily. It seems the new boss didn't think much of his productivity.
There is no such thing as `re-training' a work force. That's a meaningless illusion. Employers don't want you for two basic reasons. If you haven't worked at a job, just about identical to the one that is posted, there is no proof you can do the job. Work experience, means experience, usually two year minium at the same job they post and outline. They can always find somebody with experience to take the job.
The idea that business creates jobs is a lie. Capitalism is devoted to getting rid of as many jobs as possible, and replacing any existing job with cheaper labor.
I now know why revolutions are often very bloody. You can not re-educate a capitalist, you can not reform them. You can't take their money, because they hide it where you can`t get to it. Maybe you can get them to work, if you want to put them on a chain gang with armed guards. They are dangerous to have around as left overs from some previous regime. You can't exile them, because they will organize to overthrow a non-capitalist regime. This leaves only one option left.
CG