{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","uuid":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","normalized_title":"laborandmonopolycapitalthedegradationofworkinthetwentiethcentury","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","isbns":["0853459401"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Labor%20and%20Monopoly%20Capital%20The%20Degradation%20of%20Work%20in%20the%20Twentieth%20Century","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/search"},"page":{"printed_page":"151 / 150","pdf_page":88,"physical_index":88,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4ba4fa56ee77588fbc657d7260d1a315fcf3b41e249d7edefb6c2faec8f73ce5"},"chapter":"Acknowledgments","content":"than machinists are so frequently quite adequate. The job becomes more nearly one of simple machine actuation, workfeeding, patrolling, and inspecting. In moving to higher levels of mechanization where the machines supply control signals there is a further reduction in the attention-judgment-decisionaction activity demanded of the worker. Of course, this may be offset by increasing technical complexity of the equipment and its adjustment, which requires additional knowledge by the worker. Yet the reverse seems more common.\n\nWhen the variable control levels (Levels 11-17) are reached, we find that the worker contributes little or no physical or mental effort to the production activity. More of the functions are mechanized. The inspecting devices feed corrective information into the machine and thus relieve the operator of mental effort, decision-making, judgment, and even the need to adjust the machine. By its very definition the truly automatic machine needs no human assistance for its normal functioning. \"Patrolling\" becomes the main human contribution. The “operator,\" if he is still there, becomes a sort of watchman, a monitor, a helper. We might think of him as a liaison man between machine and operating 35 management.\n\nThat this conclusion is not simply the result of an abstract schematization of the problem, but corresponds to real conditions, is made clear by Bright through numerous examples: \"During the several years that I spent in field research on managerial problems in so-called automated plants and in exploring automation with industrialists, government personnel, social scientists, and other researchers, I was startled to find that the upgrading effect had not occurred to anywhere near the extent that is often assumed. On the contrary, there was more evidence that automation had reduced the skill requirements of the operating work force, and occasionally of the entire factory force, including the maintenance organization. 536\n\nBright's reference to the maintenance organization reflects a considerable study he made of maintenance and repair work in the plants he analyzed. He found that the effect of increased mechanization, particularly in its more developed stages, upon the need for skilled maintenance mechanics is not so simple as is usually supposed. On the one side, it is certainly true that the mechanization of a larger span of the production process, the novelty of the equipment used, the electronic circuitry and electro-hydraulic-pneumatic actuating mechanisms, and other such factors tend to increase the need for maintenance and for new skills. But on the other side, he points to a great many factors which tend in the other direction. For example: “One of the effects of automation is to compress the production line and literally to reduce the total physical amount of machinery for a given output, eveņ though that machinery may be more complex. Hence, in several instances the maintenance force was reduced simply because the total volume of machinery was reduced. This reduction more than compensated for the increase in the complexity of the equipment.\"37 This tendency is reinforced by the mechanization of trouble prevention itself with monitoring devices that anticipate difficulties, by the simplification and standardization of control mechanisms, and so on.\n\nAt the same time, the novelty of the control equipment affects only small parts of the maintenance staff. “I found no evidence,\" says Bright, \"that tinsmiths, pipefitters, welders, and carpenters required increased skill, some evidence that hydraulic and pneumatic repairmen need better training because of the increased complexity of the control circuitry, and much evidence that a significant proportion of electricians need extensive additional training.\" But even in the last instance, Bright points out, the need for electronic maintenance skills requires retraining a very limited number of mechanics. In one plant, in a maintenance crew of seven hundred, eighty were electricians, and the plant engineer found that he needed only three or four competent electronic repairmen per shift. “In other words, only about 10 percent of his electricians needed specialized skilland these amounted to only 1 percent of his total maintenance force.\"38Overall, while Bright found a number of plants that increased their maintenance staffs substantially, he also found contrasting instances, such as the following:\n\nThe most automatic small refinery in the U.S. in 1954 had a maintenance force amounting to 21 percent of the total work force. Conventional refineries show a 50 to 60 percent ratio.\n\nTwo major parts-manufacturing plants, each employing over 10,000, have devoted their attention to automatic production since 1946. Both are well known in engineering circles for outstanding automation accomplishments and use literally hundreds of highly automatic machines. Both maintenance forces are characterized by one peculiarity—lack of change. The maintenance force has remained a steady 3.5 to 5 percent of the work force in one firm, and 6 to 8 percent in the other, over the last dozen years of aggressive mechanization with automatic machinery. 39\\*\n\nThe entire evolution is marked by the very same design characteristic that the consumer sees in home appliances or automobiles: the modular construction of equipment for easy replacement of entire assemblies. While the consumer finds it expensive to buy an entire new assembly in order to replace a part worth a few cents, and also finds the consequent deterioration of repair skills among servicemen exasperating, in industry, where the length of time the production system is shut down for repairs is the most important and expensive factor, replacing entire assemblies is by far the cheapest way. But this tendency further reduces the number of mechanics who are able to do anything but replace the entire module after the source of the malfunction has been locatedand this is something advanced electronic machinery increasingly does for itself. Moreover, even the work of the repair mechanic is now being studied and standardized in much the same fashion as that of the production worker. One such system is called Universal Maintenance Standards:\n\n151\n\n150\n\nLabor and Monopoly Capital\n\nMachinery\n\n\\* John I. Snyder, Jr., president and chairman of U.S. Industries, Inc., manufacturers of automatic machinery and controls, writes: “Another myth is that automation will create jobs, not only in the running of machines, but in the building and maintenance of them. Of course this is true to a degree, but not nearly to the degree that some would have us believe. Experience has shown that after the initial ‘debugging’ of automated machines, they require relatively very little maintenance.\" 40","previous_page":87,"next_page":89}