Scientific management in the age of artificial intelligence

For those of you who didn’t reap the benefits of a Sociology of Labour 4th year seminar course on “scientific management,” that’s where the top industrialists back in the day got sold on the idea that having guys with stop-watches tracking every move a workee made in the course of their ten or twelve hour shift was devoted to productivity. That’s the kind of thinking that eventually led to guys like me taking great pride in completing the New York Times crossword in the shithouse at General Electric. 

By then we had the kind of union protection that was non-existent when the first tentacles of Taylorism, aka scientific management, were creeping onto the shop floor. And, yes, spending an hour and a half in the shit-house doing the crossword was a brazen abuse of the influence unions got us.

But it was also an act of resistance. 

As Bob says, things have changed. Thanks to “right to work for less” laws and the overall anti-union climate that has prevailed since the Thatcher-Reagan era, “union” became a controversial word in America.

I watched the Bessemer union drive with some interest. The richest man in the world played a good game. He came in with a starting wage that looked good in the slave state of Alabama. Threw some decent bennies on the table too. There’s union jobs in the USA that don’t do nearly as good.

Bezos is scared shitless of actual worker empowerment. Check out this story about his machinations to keep unions out of Whole Foods.

Heat maps? WTF?

The social scientists and artificial intelligence nerds, the Frederick Taylors of our day, are working on algorithms that will fine tune just the right amount of ethnic diversity that will minimise the risk of a successful union drive.

How fucked up is that?