Practice question · Put in order
Arrange the steps of a Taylorist reorganisation of a job in the order Taylor prescribed.
- Write the resulting method as an instruction for the worker to follow
- Time each motion and discard the unnecessary ones
- Observe how experienced workers currently perform the task
- Set an output standard and tie pay to reaching it
- Break the task into its elementary motions
Hints
- The sequence begins with observation of existing practice, not with a blueprint.
- The written instruction is where conception is separated from execution.
Show the answer
- Observe how experienced workers currently perform the task
- Break the task into its elementary motions
- Time each motion and discard the unnecessary ones
- Write the resulting method as an instruction for the worker to follow
- Set an output standard and tie pay to reaching it
Why
The fourth step is the one that matters sociologically. Once the method exists on paper in the planning office, the knowledge that used to belong to the experienced worker belongs to the firm, and the worker becomes replaceable in a way they were not before. Everything Braverman argues follows from that transfer rather than from the stopwatch.
Practise Work and Labour Markets
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