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.

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.