In the summer of 1963 I worked in my hometown
plastics factory, housed in a cinderblock building with a
corrugated metal roof, filled with cardboard boxes, machinery, and plastic. It
was often 120 degrees. This was my first on-the-job business course, an
important one in which I learned about the concepts of “labor” and “piece
work.”
I worked as a supply boy to about 15
women. My responsibility was to provide them with bundles of plastic garment
bags on which they, using heat machines, sealed the shoulder sections. The
ultimate product was the bags which enclose our dry-cleaned clothing.
These women worked piece work, hunched
over hot machines in a furnace. I learned very quickly that all plastic was not
created equally. The slipperier the plastic, the more shoulders could be
sealed. The more shoulders sealed, the more money was to be made. Good plastic
was prized. Bad plastic was to be shared, making sure no one women got all of a
bad batch. I screwed up only once, and gave a bad batch to only one woman. She
stood up, threw the plastic at me, called me a motherf**ker, picked up another
batch, sat down, and resumed work. I was not offended. I had screwed up and
knew it. So, I picked up the bad batch, threw it into the re-melt barrel and
resumed my work.
These were smart, strong women, who
needed the meager money they earned from back-straining, finger stressing work eight
hours a day. There were no official breaks, so the small bathrooms were always clogged
with smoke resulting from the quick unofficial breaks taken.
Here’s what I learned about piece work.
It sucks. It does not motivate people to work harder, it causes people to get
pissed off, cuss, and throw things. It does not improve productivity, it causes
shortcuts to be made, decreasing quality. This has been proven time and again,
but I saw it in action.
Most importantly, however, I learned that it is
demeaning to the people who work.
Here’s what I learned about “labor”.
When the word is used as a broad term to discuss people as opposed to money
(labor and capital), it disguises the issues. To think of Edna Dunbar, Castella
McDowell, Dean Wood, Nora Belle Holt, Reba Walker and all the women who worked
as hard as they could, in lousy conditions, as “labor” makes it easier for the
factory bosses to blame them for the companies’ shortcomings. It’s easier for
owners to convince themselves to move further and further south, then to Asia and other off-shore locations in search of cheaper “labor” without having to say,
“We’re looking for people who will work for nothing in lousy conditions while
we continue to make the business mistakes that drive down our profits.”
These jobs were not held by
“labor”—they were held by people like my mother, who used her pennies to pay for my coronet
lessons as a kid, bought the white shirts I wore in the band, and paid for the
food on our table. The factory provided vital jobs in a small town that was
struggling to stay alive.
The company moved away in search of
cheaper labor.
Since 1963, not much has changed. Laws
in the U.S. have been passed that require companies to provide periodic breaks
for employees. Laws in the U.S. have been passed that require working
conditions to be safe and conducive to work getting done. But we continue to
use words like “labor” to talk about how expensive people are—we have to cut
“labor costs”—and how restrictive U.S. “labor laws” have become as we continue
to look for places outside the U.S. where we can find “cheap labor” in places
"friendlier to business".
I wonder how many political leaders and
“job creators” had mothers and fathers who worked in sweat shops. I wonder how
many job creators are creating sweat shop jobs today.
Really nice article!
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