Economic Democracy

Schweickart's assessment of our current economic system and his proposal of this system economic democracy have really opened my eyes to some novel solutions to the "same old" problems that our economy and workforce seem to suffer through in capitalism. As we've found over the course of this semester, the problem that capitalism seems to have is the need for constant growth, often meaning downsizing and outsourcing, in order to remain competitive in the market. Socialism tried to answer this quintessential problem through the elimination of the market, and simply having the government provide the demand rather than the people. However, in all previous attempts the socialist/communist agenda has failed to function properly for workers. Sure they have jobs, but the quality of their products, and in return their quality of life plummets in such systems.
However, Schweickart's system of economic democracy has some unique answers to these capitalist flaws. These answers come in the way of 3 key ideals. The first ideal is that there is a semi-free market. This market is free in regards to economically equal nations, but high tariffs are placed on lesser developed areas. I think this is a great idea. These protectionist policies serve to protect both the developed nation's workers from fear of job loss to outsourcing, and abuse of cheap third world labor, as the tariff's proceeds are given back to the underdeveloped nation. The second ideal is that the workers own the means of production. This means that workers aren't simply going to work to put in their 40 hours for "the man" and receive a pittance of a paycheck, but they actually have a both a say and a vested stake in the success of the company. With a share of the management and profit sharing, it's been proven the workers will put more effort into the quality of their work, and the company will do better as a whole. The last ideal is that capital and investments from both the government and companies must be invested back into the national market. This essentially satisfies the need for constant growth that a market hungers for, and eliminating some of the hyper mobility of capital. I find that this seems to be the key idea that economic democracy has, and really like the direction it moves the economy.
I do like the ideas behind Schweickart's system of economic democracy, but I think there is a key flaw. He provides no way to switch from our existing capitalist ways into this new system. Sure once in place it can work wonders, but how do we install it? Besides, who knows if once we put the system in place whether or not we will run into flaws just as we do under capitalism?

Summer Jobs

Over past 2 years before I came to Vanderbilt, I worked a job at a local tennis shop. My work at the shop came down to anything as broad as keeping the tennis facility clean, to more calling all of the members at the last movement to let them know league play was canceled due to impending weather. After having worked at this position for so long, reading Braverman's assessment of the modern workplace seemed to have certain aspects that rang true through my work experiences. While my job's management was not as cut and dry as the clear ladder that Braverman seemed to allude to in his book, the de-skilling of labor was very clear in my work environment. Everything in the shop was run by the head pro Matt, and he had a pair of tennis pros under him (Chris, Dusty, Seth, and/or Bo) a shop manager under the pros (Pat) and 3 "evening managers" (me).
Matt held near absolute power in the shop, and provided all the instructions and tasks for others to do daily, much like Braverman suggested. Likewise, the tasks that he had the pros do were semi-skilled, and their position would be somewhat difficult to replace, as a teaching position isn't something that you can easily de-skill. However, the room for these pros to jockey for a raise was very small, as there seems to be an overabundance of washed up tennis players looking for work, or looking to improve from their old pro position, as I witnessed through 2 pros leaving for various reasons (quitting and going back to college) in my 2 years.
The position of shop manager was really 2 fold, one was a very deskilled process of keeping stock of the shop's merchandise and working the register, while the other was being a perky and warming welcome center for incoming customers. The job security in this post is somewhat guaranteed after a period of some success, as there are some concrete social skills necessary to succeed here, but the entire position has such a de-skilled overtone that basically anyone who was cheery and retired could probably learn the ropes that jockeying for a raise was not an easy affair.
Finally, my job was to basically be the handyman around the shop, work the register, clean the facilities and make the members feel welcome in the shop. It was certainly was mainly dominated by deskilled labor, and the ability to try and ask for more money was a slim prospect as anyone with the want to earn six bucks an hour could eventually be taught to fit the bill, but after working at the shop for so long, and watching the shop struggle to keep 3 night managers on payroll, I did recognize the nuances and social skills that were a part of the job that were impossible to remove. For example, after my time there I knew the back stories, and names of nearly all the regular tennis players and knew who needed a bag of ice for their arm, which court was their favorite, or who had an expected reservation on certain days and was able to keep a lively conversation with just about anyone who walked in, or grant semi-experienced tennis advice to new players. These social aspects, along with a variety of tricks and techniques for maintaing the courts that made the members happier such as leaving towels on the benches before matches, and taking the water cart routes that didn't disturb the players. While my workplace didn't fit Braverman's ideals perfectly, they did clearly have some aspects that could be modeled in his fashion, and I think that these ideals can basically be placed on many of today's careers and jobs in general.

Big Brother

I wrote a bit about this in some of my other posts about McDonald's, but I wanted to focus on a few other concepts here and tie in the Baase reading. Everyone knows that computers were a huge advancement in terms of productivity and the possibility for future improvement is now almost limitless. However, the ways that employers are using computers to stifle creativity and monitor employees is a problem. The problem for employers is that they allow workers much more freedom than they previously had. Freedom to talk to friends on instant messenger, send personal emails, browse websites, and play games. Allowing these sorts of freedoms is certainly detrimental to the bottom line and should not be tolerated in most organizations. However, the problem for employees is that their organizations can now monitor every single thing they do and can even hold them accountable for missing their keystroke quota or failing to respond to a prompt in time. I worked at Merrill Lynch last summer and they blocked almost every website that wasn’t pertinent to the company. I think that this sort of control is fine, it prevents workers from goofing off on company time. However, according to Baase, when workers are held accountable for every single move they make, aside from it being an invasion of privacy, they suffer from unnecessary stress, boredom, and low morale. Excuse me for this next comment, I’m an HOD major (probably the only one in the class), but to increase worker productivity, stifling their creativity is counterintuitive. People work differently and most people don’t meet their potential under extreme surveillance. In order to truly increase productivity in the long run, companies should work to increase employee commitment and shared vision, possibly by offering incentives to do their work and do it well, rather than by monitoring every move the employees make.

Negatives of Call Centers

I try to avoid fast food like the plague as often as possible, but the other night I found myself pressed for time and driving though a McDonald’s. While I was waiting for my food, I actually mentioned the article we read in class to the person I was ordering with. While its true that there are possible gains from the call-centers in terms of increasing accuracy, decreasing order time, and ultimately increasing bottom line profit, these aren’t the issues I brought up to my friend. Instead, I first explained how we could be talking to someone all the way in Hawaii or anywhere else in the world. I told him that they sit in call centers and take thousands of orders a day from a computer screen. He mentioned that the other day he could barely understand the person who took his order at Taco Bell, and he said that maybe a call center would have fixed the problem. I agreed with him, but I then went on to tell him that these young people work for minimum wage with barely a break for the entire day, and that they were expected to be completely on task for the entirety of their shift. I told him that every call was monitored and that each employee was expected to respond to red boxes on their computer screen by clicking within milliseconds to ensure efficiency. Is it worth degrading these workers to something barely better than machines to maybe increase profit? In that light, with these companies spending so much money on increasing efficiency, why not work to develop a technology that allows orders to be taken by computer rather than by a minimum wage worker? While there might be complications with ensuring accuracy, it would almost certainly decrease costs by more than hiring hundreds of thousands of minimum wage employees worldwide. There has to be a better use for those workers.

Endless of Capitalist Production

"Capitalism is like a computer virus which created by humans and destructive. Companies are infected with this virus.If they get rid of profit-making, they will not survive. Is this an endless or unavoidable situation?"

I think this is situation seem endless because by related to Rosen/Schweickart, the owner of capital in capitalist society belongs to private individual. All the management or purposes of company are decided by them only. Worker cannot give an opportunity to decide or protect their right by the management. Workers always paid taxes or rent to the company to ensure that they not lost their jobs. The capitalist shareholders just only want the profit-making in their goals. They decide to invest anywhere in the world where provide the low wage of labor. Today, the competition to control and have the power over economy is the main aspect for almost the company in capitalism. They must organize and find other alternatives to maintain their performance and control in business because there are so much new companies are growth.

The technology also makes the profit-making never endless because it destroys the occupation and the management exercise control over the labor process. The fast growth and development of technology make the company to apply the new machine or tool in their management and production process. Based on the Greenbaum, she said that the technology not just changes the management objectives, but the basic thing is to reduce labor costs and increasing productivity were still paramount. For example, the word-processing programs were there designed for input speed rather than for formatting and editing. There are serious problem regarding to this technology because, it will result of the failure of technical specialist to take seriously the "invisible hand" like the clerk or general office work. What about variety of new modern technology that will create in the future effect on the division of labor and employee monitoring? Is there the company just need only a few workers to do the manufacture the product because many machines and tools are used to operate the process? There will guarantee it would be.

Charlie Chaplin - Modern times

The first thing that I felt when saw this scene was very hilarious. It was hilarity' scene when I saw a worker, Chaplin together with other workers showed their attitude in the factory to wrench or twist the bolt in electro steel components. This scenes was really showed how does capitalist economic required profit-making (M-C-M'). The president of company forced his supervisor or controller to speed up the speed of machine of conveyor belt to increase the production steel components. The workers did not allow having some rest during their working time even to smoke for a while. It was an unethical for the workers to felt free and to get their right during work. Refer to the Braverman describes toward the Taylorist principles (division of labor), the work condition in this movies was seem connected to the second principle of division of labor which is separation of conception and execution. This means that there is separation of mental and manual labor in division of labor and the manager just want the de-skilled workers to work in their company. The main purpose for the manager was to cheapen the workers by decreasing their training and enlarging the production of company. So, are there any benefit come from the division of labor toward the workers? I does not really clear and see the workers gain from these divisions.

The technology also responsible for changes in the work people do relates to the Greenbaum. For example, in this scenes showed that how the salesmen for other company tried to sell their machine. The salesmen seemed to influence the president's planning by said that this machine could reduce the cost of company to pay the wage for the office worker who employed to bring food or drink to him. Are technologies will reduce the worker employment in the future? If this statement is true, it is not impossible for the rich people become richer and the poverty widespread all over world. This scene also related to the Baase said about the "Employee Monitoring". For example, Chaplin swapped the card to the time clock before enter to the restroom in this scene. This truly showed that the total worked have long been monitored by the technology. Supervisor listened to the president through the electronic monitoring screen to follow his enforcements. Are worker free or unfree and what about the workers' capacities when manager exercises control over the labor process? I just always think that the workers are unfree in the labor process because they not gain anything from the technology available and the manager monitor.

Dalis Collins

10/9/08

After reading Braverman’s and Greenbaum’s accounts of the nature of work and the influence of technology, I began to ponder my first job: a veterinary assistant. I started working for a new clinic within months of it opening when I was 15. I worked 40+ hours a week (probably illegal). The next summer I go back to work again.

Same place, same job but totally new experience. Before I had much more freedom. As one of 2 veterinary assistants and the only other employee besides the vet a vet tech, I was constantly being critique and monitored in my work personally by the vet or her husband. The next summer instead of personal monitoring there were check off sheets that each person had to initial when a task was completed Looking back, it was there way of exerting control over workers. Also, when I first started working there was a time log sheet so you wrote in your hours. The next summer, there was a computer program where you entered a special code that was used to keep track of the your hours.

While I was subject to no direct monitoring often like the workers at the McDonalds call center, I realize now I saw first hand management working out ways to control workers. The next summer it was actually much easier to get by with slacking off because now there were 5 other veterinary assistants/receptionists/kennel workers. The first summer I worked I got to participate in a larger variety of activities as I was at times the only other person besides the vet at the clinic. With the influx of more workers, my job responsibilities shrank and I no longer did things like schedule patients and write up charts.While work was still monitored, no longer was it on an individual basis except for the tasks that had to be initialed and even then that paper was often conveniently thrown away before management saw it when all the tasks were completed.

I also saw the influence of technology and its capabilities to revolutionize a workplace. When I first started, there were no online records and the only thing the computer was used for was scheduling. Prescriptions were typed up on paper and taped to vials. Now there is a computer in every exam room making the whole business paperless. Anything entered into the computer is recorded with the initials of who entered it. This is an attempt to monitor people but even then there are so many different activities going on, it is difficult. Labels are printed out in accordance to the amount charged on the invoice.

Dalis Collins

10/7/08
Economic Democracy

I think that Economic democracy seems plausible to work. That does not mean I want to change from capitalism. The government has proven time and time again that it can not manage much of anything efficiently or well if public education or welfare (2 social constructs) are any indication. Why then would we want to place the burden of investment in it? The government is currently running a deficit of $10,198,093,771,240.92. If you look around offices in the senate, almost every office has a sign outside of it calculating the debt per person for that state.

If any company ran like that, it would go bankrupt and fold. Also, while the system is a nice idea, there is no proposal for transition. It is like Social security. In all likihood, I will see nothing I am currently investing or will invest in it by the time I might need it, yet I am forced to pay into it. However even though most people realize it, it is the holy grail of politics, virtually untouchable. Why? Because no one knows how to get rid of it. There have been proposals for replacements but what about people who are currently relying on it.

How will the initial communal capital be obtained? Taxes of course, but what to do about all the private funds still in circulation. Bill Gates may be the richest man in America, but he did come by it honestly. He was raised in an upper middle class family. How are you going to strip him of all that money? Also the social tarrif is nice to equalize goods from overseas and keep the market competitive, but often those countries are poor because of corrupt and inefficient governments. Who are you going to give that kickback to in order to promote social good? Not the government I hope.

Democracy has been shown to work on a national level only if people are educated about the system which is compulsory in US schools currently. I would in fact argue that often most people are not educated enough about the issues to make an informed vote. Hell, the number of people that do vote compared to the number eligible is appalling. How is this going to transition to business? It seems like it would make for a poorly run company if less than 1/3 of its workers voted (although maybe this is good b/c the non voters might have been even less informed).

It seems to me like there are inherent flaws in the systems that could potentially outweigh the benefits. I would need to see a structured transition plan before I would even consider changing our whole economic system.

The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order

I think that the new technology being used to take fast-food orders is incredible and ridiculous at the same time. It is incredible that new levels of technology allow for these call centers for taking orders that can be many miles from the actual restaurant, yet ridiculous that minor issues such as cutting milliseconds off order time is what we're aiming to improve. As we discussed in class, how far will we go in our technological advances? What else can be done to maximize profit?
That is not to say I disagree with the idea, though. The article talks about various McDonald's restaurants making use of call centers to take orders. The purpose of this is to save time and perhaps increase profit through efficiency and increased focus of the workers on their task of taking orders. The article does not say thus far that the stations have made much of a difference in profit-making. Rather, the article only suggests about the money that could be gained from this if the call centers persist. I think that there is no harm in using these call stations and that if we have the technology to do it, why not use it? The only downfall mentioned in the article is trouble hearing orders occasionally and minor mix-ups because of customer confusion. These negatives seem very minimal when compared to the good that could come of this. Also mentioned as driving factors of remote order-taking are improvement in customer service and the lowering of barriers in language and communication, by being able to hire people solely for the job of taking orders who speak clear and distinct English. I think that these call centers are an interesting innovation and I am curious to see what will come of them.