Productivity increases along with exploitation and unemployment but it's a good deal for some

Sorting tomatoes at Campbells

In 2009, US productivity increased 3.9% and an average of 3.4% over the past five quarters since June of that year. Productivity is a measure of how much output workers produce in an hour. One of the reasons for this gain is that some 9 million of us lost our means of subsistence, our jobs. What this means for the owners of the means of producing society’s needs and the products produced, is that they have been turning out the same or greater amount of widgets with less people. As they pay us less in wages than the value of the products produced, this translates in to increased profits for them; as long as they sell them.

It is easier for the bosses to get existing workers to produce more when the supply of us in the marketplace exceeds the demand. This is especially true in an economic crisis like this one, as a climate of fear and terror exists and we will do whatever we can to keep our jobs and put food on the table and a roof over our heads. Economic terrorism on the part of the employers and their system is in full swing.

The employers have various names for this process. They call it “working smarter” or “Squeezing more” from their employees. The dominant ideology behind the drive to get workers to produce more is the Team Concept, the view that workers and bosses have the same interests which is intended to motive us to cooperate in the drive for increased productivity.

Like all US employers, Campbell Soup, one of the largest food producers in the world with such brands as V8 and Pepperidge farm cookies and many others abroad (I grew up with Bachelors which was a Campbell UK.) is using this ideology and economic terrorism to get its workers to work harder.

At its Maxton NC plant, Campbell Soup managers meet with workers before each shift to discuss ways they can help the boss save money. "The savings they achieve and the savings realized at other companies plants across the country,” writes the employers’ magazine Business Week, “help explain why US corporations are piling up profits without hiring enough people to put a big dent in unemployment. "*

Tapping in to the knowledge that those who actually do the work posses helps the boss make more profit. The bosses con us in to this arrangement because, as David Bieger, Campbell VP for North America says, “The reward for increased efficiency is a stable job and more business.” ** Campbell says that efficiency at the Maxton plant has “climbed to 85% of what its managers figure is the maximum possible, up from 75% three years ago”. BW adds that a 1% gain in plant efficiency in North America adds $3 million to operating profits.

Other US corporations are reporting increased profits by “squeezing” more out of us. They are taking advantage of the current crisis and desperate desire of people to hang on to their employment to terrorize workers in to doing more, working harder and with less on the job safety and longer hours. The competition between those on the job increases as those that can’t keep up will fall by the wayside and the competition between those of us employed and those of us looking becomes fiercer. The already brutal existence that undocumented workers receive due to their vulnerable situation will worsen. We are all aware of the inhuman conditions in the countries where workers’ rights are non-existent and dictators rule, dictators quite readily supported by US administrations.

What is happening at Campbell and other workplaces is that workers are cooperating with the employers in a desperate attempt to stay working. We are at their mercy this way. It is just another way of setting us against one another in their rapacious quest for profits. We are negotiating our own increased exploitation. It is just another method of preventing a united working class movement from developing that can wage a more successful war against them; that can actually lead a way out of this horror scene. The reason that this disastrous situation exists is that the workers’ leaders in this country cooperate with the employers also. They refuse to offer an alternative to a situation where we help our enemies destroy our own livelihoods and pit us against one another in the process. And why should they hire when we agree to work harder? We need to build links with the unemployed as they did in the thirties. A united working class movement can stop these bastards but uniting with the unemployed is crucial. Helping the boss keep them unemployed hurts us.

Instead of helping them increase their profits the alternative is to take these productive mechanisms over and run them democratically under worker’s control and management. In this way, the knowledge of production that the bosses steal from us in order to make more profit for themselves can be used to improve our lives, shorten the hours of work so that we can all be productive and eventually transform the production of food itself.

As I sit here in my local coffee shop I have watched three homeless people walk by. One of them I know as he comes in. He is obviously mentally disadvantaged and always has one coffee and twirls a rosary. I went out to make sure he wasn’t passing by this morning because he couldn’t afford a cup. He introduced himself as Dr. Martin and came in and is sitting across from me just staring at his rosary. It makes me so angry and at times we can feel so powerless but we are not.

On the notice board I saw a new addition this morning:
“Need a place to sleep. Homeless dad. No drugs, I don’t drink or smoke. Out of work. 50 yr old in San Leandro. Need sleeping bag, tent or car.”  Isn't freedom swell?

Soup heiress,  recipient of our increased productivity

I went to Forbes.com to check out a few things about Campbell soup. There was a story about Mary Alice Dorrance Malone. Her and her brother are on the board of Campbell Soup. Mary is the granddaughter of one the founders of the company and here we are, years of robbing workers and a few copulations down the road and she is the richest women in the US worth over $2 billion according to Forbes.  The increased efficiency in her plants that translates in to increased insomnia, less time with their kids, more health problems alongside fewer health benefits and strained personal relations for those whose Labor power she buys, is a good deal for her. Mary likes to breed horses at her Iron Spring Farm in Pennsylvania and it’ll help her out a bit. Her sister, Hope Hill Van Beuren is also worth more than $1 billion.

I had to laugh a bit though when I first got to the Forbes site. It had this quote from some Greek whose name I can’t remember: "Labor is pleasure in itself." I don’t think that statement would come from the mouth of a worker in a Campbell Soup factory or a hog farm in South Carolina. I’ve worked in factories and it’s the hardest work I’ve ever done, the pace of work being determined by the speed of an assembly line belt.

But I forgot that this quote is on the billionaires' website. How can Marry Malone or others like her not think “Labor is pleasure in itself”, it's brought her $2 billion and a horse farm.

They mean it’s a pleasure all right, when someone else does it.

* Campbell’s Quest for Productivity: BW 11-29-10
** (A stable job for a while, there’s no such thing as a stable job in a capitalist economy. The only thing that is constant is instability and everlasting insecurity.