Objectives: Today we will discuss the merits of Barbara Garson's analysis in The Electronic Sweatshop. Garson argues strongly that automation and surveillance technology in the workplace are antihuman and undemocratic. Do you agree or disagree? How else might we understand recent innovations in workplace technology? To enrich discussion, I will also bring in two documents: the film Roger and Me and a brief "Technology Bill of Rights" drafted by an electrical workers' union.

 

Questions to Consider:

1) Does Garson suggest that computers are inherently bad, or rather that they are utilized in harmful ways? Are the applications of workplace technology that Garson describes inevitable, or might technology be used differently?

2) Where do Garson's sympathies lie in The Electronic Sweatshop? Do you share her sympathies? Which viewpoints are not depicted sympathetically in Garson's work?

3) Throughout this course, we have identified intersections between technology and gender, race, and other identity factors. Do race, gender, or other factors affect how computer technology is applied in the modern workplace? How would Garson respond to this question?

4) Garson likens current managerial practices to the time-motion studies and other practices of scientific management at the turn of the century. Do you agree that the two management systems are similar?

5) How does Garson's account of "electronic sweatshops" compare to dominant cultural representations of how technology is transforming the workplace?

6) What are Garson's predictions for the future of workplace technology? Are those predictions plausible? Are they desirable?

7) Garson's book, while still timely, is now over ten years old. What changes have taken place that she did or did not anticipate?

 

Passages

To professional futurists the office computer heralded a second industrial revolution that would eliminate the routine, monotonous jobs; we would all be transformed into knowledge workers in the postindustrial era.

The first time I used a computer was in 1981 as a data entry clerk. I entered the Office of the Future through a door that led into a windowless basement where dozens of women sat spaced apart, keying with three fingers of one hand. . .

There weren't any supervisors in the room except for one young man in a glass booth who tended the computer and changed our tapes. Yet the women worked nonstop . . . . (9-10)

 

The one thing I didn't anticipate was the underlying motive. I had assumed that employers automate in order to cut costs. And, indeed, cost-cutting is often the result. But I discovered in the course of this research that neither the designers nor the users of the highly centralized technology I was seeing knew much about its costs and benefits, its bottom-line efficiency. The specific form that automation is taking seems to be based less on a rational desire for profit than on an irrational prejudice against people. (13)

 

"Don't worry, you don't have to understand. You follow the beepers, you follow the buzzers and you turn your meat as fast as you can. It's like I told you, to work at McDonald's you don't need a face, you don't need a brain. You need to have two hands and two legs and move 'em as fast as you can. That's the whole system. I wouldn't go back there again for anything." (20)

 

"They take a chance and see if you're desperate. I have my family to stay with. That's why I didn't go back. But if I really needed the money, like if I had a kid and no family, I'd have to make arrangements to work any hours.

"Anyway, they got a full day's work out of me." (23)

 

"Aren't you worried that the most qualified people will quit?"

"The only qualification to be able to do the job is to be able to physically do the job. . ." (33)

 

By combining twentieth-century computer technology with nineteenth-century time-and-motion studies, the McDonald's Corporation has broken the jobs of griddleman, waitress, cashier and even manager down into small, simple steps. Historically these have been service jobs involving a lot of flexibility and personal flare. But the corporation has systematically extracted the decision-making elements from filling french fry boxes or scheduling staff. They've siphoned the know-how from the employees into the programs. They relentlessly weed out all variables that might make it necessary to make a decision at the store level, whether on pickles or on cleaning procedures. (37)

 

"[T]here is no such thing as a McDonald's manager. The computer manages the store." (39)

 

[T]he automation of conversation is just an extension of factory or fast-food automation: first the bolt, then the burger, then the word. (42)

 

As much as I like the job it's hard to sit there ten hours a day tied to this computer that keeps track of your every move. Your phone line is like your umbilical chord into the computer. (50)

 

"Back then, Air Canada had just installed the electronic monitoring, but the supervisors hadn't learned what information they could get. They didn't know how to come to you and say, 'Look at this eight minutes out of line. . . What was the reason?' When they did start using it to their advantage, then I found the job easier, because everyone was pulling their weight.

"Of course, there's more pressure too." (53)

 

At the time I interviewed Jack, Air Canada already had a self-booking machine on the drawing board. Like a bank money machine, it would be operated entirely by the customer. The machine would accept reservations and also issue tickets, boarding passes, and luggage tags. In a sense, the computer-aided clerk is merely a transition toward a machine. Jack Burford wasn't making the transition gracefully. (57)

 

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