Comments on: Guest post by SocProf: When Management Creates Labour Pain

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:11:10 +0000

I’m glad you found it relevant, Debbieanne.

The recent stats on the health and safety of Centrelink workers are significant in this regard, I’d suggest as well.

By: Debbieanne

Debbieanne — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:14:57 +0000

Thankyou to Mark and SocProf, for this personally interesting post.
I have first hand experience of ‘suffering at work’. I was diagnosed 10 years ago with fibromyalgia and severe depression, after a couple of years of work related ‘stress’. I am positive that a great deal of my problems came from the lack of recognition, on both a personal level (my work) and the amount of work required. I worked at Centrelink for 13 years, the last five at the supervisor level.

By: paul walter

paul walter — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:10:32 +0000

Yes David; remember the times when you could actually get up AFTER the sun rose. Such decadence is unspeakable in these times of bracing reform.
It was just Dunstan’s (sure it wasn’t Bannon?) fault tho, it was both lots, with big business ominously breathing down the back of their necks, accept for those holding Eyre peninsular farwest electorates, who found themselves up at the equivalent of midnight- for lunch.

By: David

David — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:25:14 +0000

paul @ 3 – You may, like me, remember that golden age when we still had our proper time zone (1 hour behind the eastern states), rather than the bastard child we have now, which was introduced, I think, by Dunstan to get us a bit closer to Melbourne business’ hours (irrelevant in this post-telephone age, I would have thought).

Oh, by the way, I hate Daylight Saving time as well.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:13:19 +0000

Yes, there is, and I should have clarified that – what concerns me is the focus on productivity narrowly understood – Gillard, for instance, appears to have decided that limited collective bargaining rights plus flexibility is the sine qua non.

By: Robert Merkel

Robert Merkel — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:08:05 +0000

Interesting post.

One point I’d take up is that productivity doesn’t have to be the enemy of a rewarding working life.

Isn’t there a whole strain of management theory about happy, engaged workers being more productive?

By: Liam, Punching The Bundy Clock, Ohh Yeah

Liam, Punching The Bundy Clock, Ohh Yeah — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:04:09 +0000

nostalgic Fordism lovin’

Which is done the same way reliably over and over again, but faster and faster, right?

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:03:45 +0000

Paulus, I think “recognition” is actually the key. Work intensification can be resisted (and not just formally), but it’s much easier to do so on the basis of a secure work contract and employee “voice”.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:01:45 +0000

Yes, Anthony, I know that was very schematic. Aspects of Braverman’s critique are a little questionable – for instance the long term trend to deskilling – whereas what tends to happen is deskilling in some occupations/industries combined with the emergence of others which are then deskiled, but I didn’t mean to indulge in some nostalgic Fordism lovin’…

By: Anthony

Anthony — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:39:57 +0000

Mark, you’re highlighting what in retrospect seem the Good Points of fordism. But the fordist postwar boom can be seen as based on a conjunction which seems anomalous given what went before and what has come after: the deskilling of labour conjoined with rising and secure wages.The odd conjunction explains why, in the early 1970s, writers such as Harry Braverman bemoaned the prevalence of fordist work (ie, deskilled work for men) and, a decade later, writers such a Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison were bemoaning its disappearance (ie, high and securely waged work for men):