By Richard
Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Language is important. What the capitalist means by freedom is the right of capital to exploit labor. It means the right of the boss to control the labor process and how work is done. The end goal of this is profits.
Language is important. What the capitalist means by freedom is the right of capital to exploit labor. It means the right of the boss to control the labor process and how work is done. The end goal of this is profits.
The
theoreticians of the 1% measure productivity as how much a worker produces in
an hour. From the mid 1990’s to 2003, the French workers were more productive
than we are here in the US.. Things
changed by 2007 when a UN report found that US workers were now the most
productive thanks to our dedication; we spent more time on the job. By 2006,
the U.S. worker put in 1,804 hours of work the UN report said, compared with
1,407.1 hours for the Norwegian worker, and 1,564.4 for the French. The US 1%
were ecstatic. Increasing productivity
through keeping workers on the job longer is preferable to hiring more workers
cutting in to profits and threatening inflation.
The
capitalist class, that section of society that buys human labor power as
opposed to workers who sell it, is not very happy with present productivity
gains averaging around 0.6% over the last four years.
Bloomberg
Business Week has a short piece on productivity in its latest edition and
explains that figuring out the road productivity will travel is a tricky one.
It is important because understanding how it will change will help Federal
Reserve Chair Janet Yellen determine interest rates. It’s important to read
between the lines when serious journals of the 1% like BusinessWeek report on
the state of the economic system they govern.
“Productive workers don’t
heat up an economy too fast because they use existing equipment and factories
efficiently”
BW writes. Business Week explains that
if workers are less productive (producing less in an hour of work than the
bosses want to keep profits respectable) employers are forced to “…hire more of them to get the work done”
But
getting the “work done” is only part
of it. The process of work produces more value than the boss returns to the
worker in wages and it is this added value that the boss gets for free that is
the sole aim of the owner of capital, their reason for existence. Putting it
bluntly, profit has its origin in the unpaid labor of the working class.
Business
Week explains that innovation like technology and labor saving devices drive
productivity increases as well as “other
forces economists can’t readily quantify, such as changes in work practices”. I have to laugh at the next line, “These murky influences are symptomatic of
the ignorance of the economists…..” BW adds.
I don’t
think these influences are so murky for working folk. We know too well
what “output per worker means,” what
the bosses’ mean when they talk about “changing
work practices.” The
most commonly used term the bosses’ have for increased productivity without
hiring is “squeezing”, they must “squeeze” more out of existing
employees. For many a clerical worker it means smaller booths, fewer
windows, an ergonomic work area that allows the shortest distance between two
points so that memo can be typed faster, those other documents finalized
quicker.
For a teacher it means 40 children in a class, no classroom assistants, using more of their own money and donating more of their free time in an effort to try and get their kids the help they need. It is criminal the way teachers are treated in the public education system. This too, needs to be privatized so profit can be made by those who choose to invest in eduction and we all suffer.
For a teacher it means 40 children in a class, no classroom assistants, using more of their own money and donating more of their free time in an effort to try and get their kids the help they need. It is criminal the way teachers are treated in the public education system. This too, needs to be privatized so profit can be made by those who choose to invest in eduction and we all suffer.
For
a production worker it means increased belt speeds. For a nurse it means you’ll
never have time to talk to that patient or get to know them as a human being,
to give them the human side of care in the way that you would like to. For all
workers it means more overtime and weakening of jobsite protections. It means
multi-tasking and more output with fewer hands. It means layoffs, unemployment
and increased stress and tiredness in the home. It means increased competition
between workers and all the tension that entails as we are forced to work
faster and harder in order to increase “output
per worker” for our individual bosses’.
Labor
saving technology and innovation does not improve the standard of living of the
working class as a whole, it drives us deeper in to impoverishment. We do not
own the technology, we do not own the innovation, the robots, the machines. The
capitalist owns them and their main purpose is to increase profits.
Let’s
look at what that UN report I mention above said about wealth produced in
comparing US workers to others, wealth produced because we had less leisure
time:
“Each U.S. worker
produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other
countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland
comes in second at $55,986, ahead of Luxembourg, $55,641; Belgium, $55,235; and
France, $54,609.” CBS News
Sept. 2007 I will guarantee that the workers in the US, Ireland and these
other countries did not earn the equivalent of what they produced.
Whether workers are productive or not bosses will always try
to get more as they compete with their rivals for market share. When their rivals are in Bangladesh or
Cambodia the pressure to drive down wages and eliminate conditions that benefit
workers (those murky workplace practices) are intense. As more is “squeezed” out of workers in order to avoid hiring, the workplace
becomes ever more oppressive as those of us remaining on the job put our noses
to the grindstone in order to keep our slot as the army of unemployed or lower
waged waits at the doorstep. From
1973 to 2011, worker productivity grew 80 percent, while median hourly compensation,
after inflation, grew by just one-eighth that amount, according to the Economic
Policy Institute.
Caterpillar has been making stellar profits. It recently
closed it’s plant is London Ontario laying off 450 workers and moved production
down to the Muncie Indiana where wages are 50% lower. Yet in 2012 Caterpillar recorded record
profits but still demanded a six-year wage freeze from its workers.
Up until
1975, wages nearly always accounted for more than 50 percent of the nation’s G.D.P.
the NYT labor writer Steven Greenhouse points out and that, “From 1973 to 2011, worker productivity grew
80 percent, while median hourly compensation, after inflation, grew by just
one-eighth that amount, according to the Economic Policy Institute.”* That’s
what productivity means for the boss.
Some
writers make the point that this is partially because unions are not strong
enough to halt the decline even as companies are making record profits. It is correct that the declining influence of
unions is a major factor. But this is
not due to the lack of power or potential for it. The heads of organized labor
shoulder most of the blame, ideologically wedded to the Team Concept, holding
the view that profits are sacrosanct and the market the answer to all things,
they do whatever they can to help the bosses stay competitive and US capitalism
to remain competitive in face of competition from its global rivals. This all comes at the expense of the worker
and our Standard of living.
As
workers we must reject this false idea that the market is god and that there is
no other way to organize the production of human needs other than under the
auspices of market forces and private ownership of society’s dominant
productive forces. For workers, freedom can only come if we control the labor process.
We don’t necessarily all draw this
conclusion at the same time. We learn through struggle. But we know what we need. We know what
increased productivity feels like as it is written in our flesh and blood. In the public sector when that lead worker
looks at his watch or asks what your doing when for a minute you have to call
your partner or wife about an important issue that has arisen or when they cop
an attitude because you’re taking your union won morning break it is because
that lead worker, even in the public sector, is feeling the pressure of the
market and the drive for productivity and profits and is in fear of ending up
on the unemployment line.
They always used to threaten us in the public sector that if we weren’t more competitive the company will contract out our work; we were thrown in to competition with our brothers and sisters in the private sector, a recipe that takes us all to the bottom and makes building the solidarity needed for a broad, direct action movement to defend our livelihoods all the more difficult. We are thrown in to competition for the necessities of life along racial, nationalist and color lines, this is why racism and nationalism are so destructive to all workers, even those like many whites here in the US who appear to benefit in the short term and have as coercion and state violence is directed more aggressively at people of color, or men who ignore the plight of women workers. With US capitalism’s decay, its ability to play the divide and rule card has become more difficult but as workers it is we that must challenge these issues and speak out.
They always used to threaten us in the public sector that if we weren’t more competitive the company will contract out our work; we were thrown in to competition with our brothers and sisters in the private sector, a recipe that takes us all to the bottom and makes building the solidarity needed for a broad, direct action movement to defend our livelihoods all the more difficult. We are thrown in to competition for the necessities of life along racial, nationalist and color lines, this is why racism and nationalism are so destructive to all workers, even those like many whites here in the US who appear to benefit in the short term and have as coercion and state violence is directed more aggressively at people of color, or men who ignore the plight of women workers. With US capitalism’s decay, its ability to play the divide and rule card has become more difficult but as workers it is we that must challenge these issues and speak out.
The
militarization of the police and the beefing up of this security apparatus that
is having such catastrophic consequences for workers and youth of color is part
of the drive for profits, it is the 1% preparing to defend its class interests
against resistance that the more astute theoreticians of capital know will develop.
We will see the BearCats in the suburbs as well in the period ahead; no section
of the working class should be left to fight the capitalist offensive alone.
The most important immediate task is to build an offensive of our own, to build
the structures and movement necessary to drive back this offensive of capital.
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