The Coming Speed Up at Your Job: Parts One and Two

Part One:
As a carpenter who’s been in the trade 25 years I’ve been more than aware of the constant ratcheting up of speed on construction sites. I’ve had to stop apprentices running on site, I’ve witnessed numerous accidents that could’ve been avoided and I have felt the pain of routinely working 10 hours in an 8-hour day.
Each introduction of new technology on the job that could’ve slowed the pace of work only increased it. Then this Recession hit and it’s like every boss wants even more. Always pushing, always complaining.
When my one daughter gets home from school she sometimes sits in my lap and counts the small cuts on my hands. I noticed recently an increase in those small cuts. We as workers are expected to give more for less. The employers want more blood out of the stone. Working people have always paid for the lifestyles of the bosses. Now we have to pay more. Why? Because they have the power. As George Bush finally admitted 8 years into his tenure, we live under capitalism. That's right. What’s good for capital is good, period. And that’s bad news for the millions of us who are already enduring our repetitive strain injuries.
Part Two:
Blue collar, white collar. If we are lucky enough to keep our jobs, we will all be working harder in the next year. I wanted to share one example of the boss turning the screw on white collar workers. I recently got off a job where we built out a commercial space for a finance company. During the job the drawings changed and a number of private offices we were building shrank in size. We built 20 offices that were less than 6-foot by 8-foot. A rather generous size for a grave, but incredibly small for a human being to work in, with desk, chair and all. None of these offices have windows, but they do have frosted glass in their doors. Oh, and they have plenty of artificial light, and white, white walls.
One worker joked that now they’re closing Gitmo and that maybe the detainees are getting sent here.