Bernard Franks looks at the early history of Time and Motion methods in industry Taylorism 'l' ylori

THE METHODS used by employers in modern productivity bargaining aim at combining high initial payments and a friendly approach to workers with an extremely fast rate of working, a systematic rundown of the labour force and the assertion of a hire and fire discipline.

These are all to be found roated in the use made of the earliest form of work study the Taylor System of Scientific Since capitalism's earliest days, employers have worked to squeeze every last ounce of energy out of the worker by threats of sacking, by speedingup machines and by giving workers more machines to operate.

However, it was not until the 1880s that attempts were made to measure work systematicall and put its examination and operation on a scientific basis.

Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in Philadelphia, USA in 1856. Of middle-class background, he first studied law, but due to bad sight gave it up and, instead, at the age ot 18, became an apprentice patternmaker.

Four years later, in 1878, he was made up to journeyman and went to work at the Midvale Steel Company, Pennsylvania.

Within eight years he had taken a degree in mechanical engineering and had also become the chief engineer of the company.

The Bethlehem Steel Company It was during his time at Midvale, and following this, at the Bethlehem Steel Company, that he conducted several experiments in timing workers with a stopwatch and that he developed his concept of 'scientific manageHis conclusions, from having held positions at all levels and from having been a gang boss himself for a time, were that employers never knew just how fast a worker was able to work.

He found that in order to protect slower, weaker members of a group, and in order to maintain piece-rates and prevent a job finishing up too quickly, workers "soldiered' worked slower than was technically possible. man, decided that it was his duty' to break down this protective system and to arrive at a position where each worker was working continuously at the fastest possible pace.

His method was to pick out an operative who looked able to work at an above average rate.

This worker was separated off MARXISM and the TRADE UNIONS TwO: ALEON Ticles by! TROTSKI I would like about THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE Fill in the form below and send to NATIONAL SECRETARY, SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE, 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, LONDON, SW4. Name Address Trade unions in the epoch of imperialist decay• Communism and syndicalism • AVAILABLE FROM : . NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS, 186A CLAPHAM HIGH STREET, LONDON, S.W.4. from the rest and was paid a special wage for working at top speed.

Ait the same time, Taylor used a stopwatch to time the speed of operation and also worked out new methods of action to make the worker more eficient. Other workers in the firm who could also work at this pace were paid the special rate until a gang of very fast operatives had been built up. then told to the wat one mess to work at the new pace.

Those who would not or could not were sacked or given other work. New •workers taken on either had to work at this speed or lose the job.

Taylor was not concerned with establishing 'average' work levels for 'average' workers; his aim was a continuous turnover of workers until an 'élite' of highspeed operators was established.

First-class man Furthermore, he advised any employer who adopted his system 'to make tasks so difficult that they can only be accomplished by a first-class man'.

'A certain percentage of them,' he wrote in his book 'Shop Management', publisher in 1903, "with the best intention will fail in this and find that they have no place in the new organization, while still others, and among them some of the best workers, who are, however, stupid or stubborn can never be made to see that the new system is as good as the iold; and these, too, must drop out.' Taylor considered it essential in times of full employment to win the workers' full agreement to working at top speed by giving him a new philosophy, that of class collaboration and oooperation with the management:

"The substitution of hearty brotherly co-operation for contention and strife; of both pulling hard in the same direction instead of pulling apart;

of replacing suspicious watchfulness with mutual confidence, of becoming friends instead of enemies.

It is along these lines, I say, that scientific management must be developed.' Sacking and disciplining Taylor found no contradiction tween this view and the fact at he supported the ruthless cking and disciplining systems ›erated by the steel companies.

It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best mplements and working conlitions, and enforced 00operation that this faster work can be assured.

enforcing co-operation Price: 38. 6d 7L Work Study rests with the management alone. The management must supply continually one or more teachers to show each new man the new and simpler motions, and the slower men must be constantly watched and helped until they have risen to their proper speed.

'All of those who after proper teaching, either will not or cannot work in accordance with the new methods and at the higher speed must be discharged by the management.' Neither did the need to encourage 'mutual confidence' stop him advocating the accasional use of secret timing methods using a number of stopwatches hidden in a notebook:

"There are many cases ...

in which telling the workman that he was being timed in a minute way would only result in a row, and in defeating the whole object of timing.' ('Shop Taylor's bases for actual changes at management level were found in his concept of 'functional management'.

Seperate

supervision In place of the system where one gang boss supervised all aspects of the work, he put forward the idea of a separate supervision for each aspect of the operations.

In a machine shop this would mean a gang boss for preparing work and ensuring that every machine operator has work to be done, a speed bass to see that the right tools are available and to see that all work is being done in the shortest time, an inspector responsible for quality and a repair boss , who makes sure that each worker keeps his machine clean and oiled and generally maintains it.

A planning department would send out work specifications and euch worker would be handed a 90 10 card with his day's instructions on it prior ing work.

The best known example of Taylor's system in operation is given by him in his book, 'The Principles of Scientific Management', written in 1911.

He explains how at the Bethlehem Steel Company a gang of Chairman:

Then, how does scientific management propose to take care of men who are not 'first-class' men in any particular line of work?

I give it up.

Scientific m has no place Taylor:

Scientific m nag has no place Dr :

that can sing ind sing.

30. bird von't 90 60 40 55 5 50 I0 40 HEUER 20 30= 35 25 60 40 first pig-iron handlers had to consuously load chunks of pig-iron ch weighing 92 Ibs into railly wagons:

"They were good, average pig-iron handlers, were under an excellent foreman who himself had been a pig-iron handler, and the work was done, on the whole as cheaply Chairman:

1 am not about birds at Taylor:

No man who can work and won't work has any place under scientific Chairman:

It is not a question of a man who can work and won't work; it is a question of a man who is not a 'first-class' man in any 'il, 50 as it anywhere else at the time.' Taylor goes on to state:

'We found that this gang were loading on the average about 124 long tons per man per day. We were surprised to that had, after studing the matter, one particular according to your definition.

handler ought to handle tween 47 and 48 long tons day instead of 12} tons.' From this point Taylor began a 'scientific selection of warkmen' and built up a team of workers who moved 47g tons a day each instead of 12} tons and who received 60 per cent higher wages than normal gangs.

Similarly, by using the same principle of rationalizing working operations and building a force of picked labourers, a team of 600 shovellers at Bethlehem was reduced to 140.

Each of these workers shifted 59 tons of ore a day in contrast to 16 tons by members of the original gang.

To bring this about, Taylor had undertaken a detailed examination of shovelling techniques, breaking them down into their separate moves or elements and timing these to the nearest 100th of a minute.

He experimented with the size of the shovels and found that a greater amount of tonnage was shifted each day with a smaller shovel which the labourers could use at greater speed.

He also carefully drew plams of the yards where the men worked so that the movements of workers from one part of the yards to another could be mapped out in advance. By these methods he eventually arrived at the reduced work force.

Average cost

of handling This meant that though the actual wage of each worker could be raised from $1.15 to $1.88, the average cost of handling a ton fell from $0.072 to $0.033.

Taylor estimated that this resulted in a saving of between $75,000 to $80,000 a year. He was adamant that extra money should be paid to workers, but this should not be too much.

While on the one hand ninefold increases in output were attainable, on the other hand, no more than 60 per cent increase should be made because:

'It does not do for most men to get rich too fast.' He explained that workers who cannot see why they should not receive double pay for doing double the work should be told that the increase in output is not only due to their labour, but also to the new methods and to the use of new machinery and appliances and that in any case cusomers must be allowed to benefit with lower prices and the company. by receiving greater profits.

Exactly these arguments have been taken over in recent years by the Prices and Incomes Board in Britain when turning down wage increases for workers who havé raised output by large amounts.

It is significant that Taylor was an engineer, as not only his examination of machines and shovels but also that of workers and of human actions were made solely in mechanical terms.

Level of horsepower At one time he conducted experiments to try and find out what level of horsepower a man could exert in a day, convinced that only by knowing , this could he fix a 'proper' level of work and ensure that no slacking was taking place.

The economic period in which Taylor developed his system was one of unprecedented upsurge for the USA.

For example, the promotion of pig-iron, an indicator of heavy industrial production generally, was nearly doubled between the years 1893 and 1900. Many combinations absorbed their weaker rivals and Standard Oil in particular gained large interests in New York Banks and in the iron mines and transportation systems.

At the same time, the US working class combined to force employers to reduce the hours of work and increase wages.

By 1905, the American Federation of Labour (AFL), a union that strongly opposed Taylor's methods, had a membership of nearly two million.

The Bethlehem Steel Company needed Taylor's methods to speed up production and reduce costs in the face of competition from United Steel, and also to operate as an alternative to union It succeeded in this to the extent of buying out numerous small plants, including Midvale, and going on to becomé the world's second largest steel company.

Hostility to unions Taylor's hostility to unions was expressed in particular over their placing limitations on the amount of work an operative should do, and on the collective protection they gave to groups of employees when Taylor specifically wanted to deal separately with each worker.

His hatred came out clearly in Shop Management':

'Some of the labour unions have succeéded in persuading the people in some parts of this country that there is something sacred in the cause of union labour and that, in the interests of this cause, the union should recéive moral support whether it is right in any particular case or not.

'Union labour is sacred just so long as its acts are fair and good, and it is damnable just as soon as its acts are bad.

Its rights are precisely those of non-union labour, neither greater nor less. The boycott, the use of force or intimidation, and the oppression of non-union workmen by labour are damnable; these tolerated by un-American and will not be péople.

'One of the most interesting and difficult problems connected with the art of management is how to persuade union men to do a full day's work if the union does not wish them to do it.

I am glad of the opportunity of saying what I think on the matter, and of explaining somewhat in detail just how I should expect, in fact, how I have time after time induced union men to do a large day's work, quite as large as other men do.' Ruthless It was the labour unions, however, which organized against the ruthless exploitation of workers: by employers using Taylor's methods.

A leaflet issued by the head of he machinists' union in 1912 contained the following:

Instead 1 of collective bargaining, Mr Taylor insists on individual agreement, and any insistence on organized-labour methods will result in discharge. Wherever this system has been tried it has resulted either in labour trouble or failure to install the system, so it has destroyed the labour organization and reduced the men to virtual slavery, low wages, and has engendered such an air of suspicion among the men that each man regards every other man às a possible traitor or spy.' death in 1915 publicising his ethods.

The 'collaboration'