Empire of Illusion - Chris Hedges [72]
During the 1980s American automobile corporations used this tactic of labor-management cooperation to compete with what was seen as the Japanese economic juggernaut. “ . . . [T]his can be seen, for example,” González recounts, “in the charts at the Chevrolet Gear and Axle plant in Detroit, which lists the sales figures of various American and Japanese cars. Next to these lists is a sign that reads, ‘You are entering the war zone, Quality and productivity are our weapons.’”19
Workers at GM were arranged into “self-managed” “quality circles,” or teams of workers who form an identity. These teams competed with other teams to increase their productivity. “We and they” mentality is reduced and collapses into a collective “we.” Quality circles at GM gave themselves names such as “Joe’s Trouble Shooters,” “Positive Approach,” and “Loose Wires and Stripped Nuts.”20
“Any status symbol that ferments class consciousness is removed from the workplace,” noted Robert Ozaki in his book Human Capitalism in an observation of a GM-Toyota plant in California. “There are no parking spaces or toilets reserved for executives. Managers and workers dine in the common cafeteria. . . . Production workers are called ‘associates’ or ‘technicians’ rather than ‘workers’ or employees.’”21
Prestige systems, like those in the military, were employed at the Toyota plant at which Satoshi Kamata worked in the 1970s. He recalled how hats of different colors and stripes were used to distinguish rank: “ . . . two green stripes stand for Seasonal Worker; one green stripe, Probationer; one white stripe, Trainee; one red stripe, Minor; a cap without any stripe, Regular Worker; two yellow stripes, Team Chief. . . .”22 “At the same assembly plant,” González continued, citing Kamata’s book Japan in the Passing Lane: An Insider’s Account of Life in a Japanese Auto Factory, “Good idea suggestions” were elicited from workers, and the number submitted by each worker was posted in the locker room.23 Similarly, one of Kamata’s closest friends boasted about the number of pieces he could produce in a work day. Production became a source of identity and prestige .24 Any incident or act that disrupted production was condemned. When a worker in Kamata’s quality circle was injured on the job, all members were forced to wear a “Safety First arm band.” This saw them stigmatized by others in the plant.25 Low prestige was attached to the arm band. Peer pressure--from a worker’s own team-- formed a strong disincentive for anyone to report a job-related injury to avoid having to wear the arm band.
González in Brave New Workplace described a long and double-edged history of attempts to reconcile workers’ interests with those of corporations. It dated back to the “scientific management” methods of Frederick Taylor, who, in the name of efficiency, “‘streamlined’ assembly plants by conducting time-motion studies of each worker, breaking down each movement into a number of discrete steps, and then reorganizing them in a more efficient sequence by eliminating all unnecessary movements.”26 This dehumanization led Taylor’s disciples to take another approach. While some conservative followers focused solely on “productivity and efficiency,” liberal “business leaders, bankers, politicians, trade-union leaders, and academic social scientists” during the 1920s “tried to forge a viable corporate order.”27 They sought to establish a stable corporate state by implementing worker “uplift” programs, such as collective bargaining, profit-sharing, company magazines, insurance, pension plans, safety reform, workmen’s compensation, restricted work hours and the “living wage.” The idea that “better living and working conditions would render him [the worker] more cooperative, loyal, content, and, thus, more efficient and ‘level-headed’ . . . also carried over into such aspects of the industrial-betterment movement as gardens, restaurants, clubs, recreational facilities, bands, and medical departments.”28
“Since at least a century ago, a number of engineers, businessmen,