Digital Taylorism

 “On the Clock – What Low Wage Work Did to Me and How it Drives America Insane,” by Emily Guendelsberger, 2019

A white-collar worker walks into an Amazon warehouse, a Convergys/AT&T call center, a McDonald’s … to work!  Guendelsberger is a journalist who was laid off and then took time to update Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 classic “Nickel and Dimed – On Not Getting By in America.”  This is her story of how the intensity and stress of labor has gotten worse for temporary, low-paid blue collar or service workers since 2001 due to computerization.

The key is the full application of Taylorism through technology.  Taylor was the first to develop ‘scientific’ management in the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s, timing workers’ tasks and breaking them up into smaller tasks.  Under capital, speed-up and de-skilling of labor was the result, but the higher work productivity drove up profits.  With computers, algorithms, digital tracking and databases, workers have now been captured by a digital Taylorism.  Time theft is the cardinal sin and the computer knows it to the second.  Even though the workers’ time, energy, bodies and minds are being stolen every day.  Humans are now required to be flesh robots, before being replaced by actual ones, working at high speed, sometimes with little knowledge required.  Short-staffing is built into this situation – something nearly every worker is familiar with.

It is no surprise that turnover is huge in these jobs.  I myself worked in warehouses, in shipping and in a call center for a long time years ago and it was nothing like this - though two of those jobs were union shops.  ‘Union’ is a dirty word in these places.

AMAZON

Guendelsberger goes into detail on what each job entails.  She gets a temporary job through an agency at a giant Amazon ‘fulfillment center’ in Louisville, Kentucky, an anti-union state.  That fact is indicative of the labor conditions there.  As a product picker, she works through excruciating pain, boredom and exhaustion, feeding on free pain pills from an Amazon dispenser while walking 15 miles a day trying to make ‘rate’ on a timed tracker.  Her scanner tracks every product, her location and her time.  According to some Amazon workers, Amazon is an improvement over similar low-paid jobs, as they pay a bit more and have a bit of paid ‘time off.’  Which tells you something about what is going on in the U.S. class system.

As part of its proletarian workforce, Amazon uses workampers – mostly elderly RV folks or ‘crusty punks’ who follow seasonal or temp jobs around the country, living in RVs, vans, cars or tents – while paying for their camping spots.  These are our modern hobos and Hoovervilles.

Guendelsberger lasts a month at Amazon as a temporary ‘white badge’ during a Christmas surge, while living in an acquaintance’s bedroom, eating fast food and taking quick smoke breaks.  The carrot held out in front of white badges is to make rate, excel, and you ‘may’ be hired as a permanent ‘blue badge.’  At one point she collapses in agony and can’t get up, though she gets better at the job as time goes on.  After Christmas Eve, she is happy to drive away.

Amazon Warehouse

AT&T & CONVERGYS

Convergys is the number 1 call center corporation in the U.S., selling their services to many top U.S. corporations.  Guendelsberger gets hired at the Hickory, North Carolina Convergys facility, one of many.  As a help line ‘representative’ for AT&T, Guendelsberger is tracked every second.  She’s forced to make sales pitches to every caller except those disconnecting AT&T for a dead person.  Workers must multi-task through archaic software and hardware, many times dealing with angry AT&T customers while attempting to pitch DirectTV. She almost has a breakdown on one nasty call where a woman screams and swears at her for a long time as she fumbles with the software.  She is forbidden to hang up or talk back.  The job attracts mostly young working class women with children who can’t get a better job.  She has no kids, so that burden is not on her shoulders.  Still…

At the end of Guendelsberger’s 5 weeks of training the 20 who started are whittled down to 8.  A month later it is zero.  At one point her supervisor points out that any time off the phone, other than the legally-required breaks, is not paid, which disturbs nearly everyone.  Convergys knows this because they track every workers’ keystrokes, programs, logins and calls. After work she sleeps in her small car in a nearby Walmart parking lot, using its toilet while showering at a nearby health club.  A sympathetic female co-worker finally offers her an empty bedroom.

During her time in Hickory, Guendelsberger takes a side trip into Hickory’s past, when it was ‘the furniture capital of the world.’  Clinton, the 1990s, NAFTA and off-shoring killed the industry, leaving empty factories and lost wages.  Locals had to trade higher-paid furniture factory jobs for fast food, retail clerking or this call center.

McDonalds

Guendelsberger works for a high-end McDonalds in San Francisco for two months, as city and state law mandate $14 an hour at that point, some sick time and more normal consistent scheduling.  She has always loved the junk food at McDonalds so she feels at home with the menu.  She details the complexities and stress of working there.  The line never quits, people make convoluted time-sucking orders, people get angry, throw food at workers and understaffing is intentional due to a standard algorithm that estimates capacity at every moment.  To order one item she counts 28 steps she has to engage in. She gets a skin burn like 70% of fast food workers.  Homeless people crowd the neighborhood and store, ordering off the secret $1 or cheap menu but also create chaos at times.

Most of the workers at this McDonalds are Latinas or Filipinas who also have kids, fitting the profile of increased exploitation of women workers.  This is similar to the other two jobs she had.  Their commutes are longer, but she gets a free bed a mere 40 minutes away by the BART.  McDonalds is so fast-paced that she can barely talk or make friends with anyone.

One of the main points she makes is the high stress levels all 3 jobs produce due to the inhuman speedup.  She herself claims she has PTSD and gets angry or flustered somewhat easily.  She cannot push back according to the rules of every company, but must put up with abuse.  She never works directly for the large capitalist firms, but for a temp agency at Amazon, a 3^rd party at AT&T, a franchisee at McDonalds.  So the corporations can always claim innocence even though the reality is the opposite.

TAKEAWAYS

One of the bigger takeaways from this book is that many southern workers don’t know how badly they have it.  They are desperate for a job and praise the tiny benefits because they know nothing else.  Anyone who doesn’t like the treatment dished out by Amazon or Convergys is ‘lazy’ or ‘spoiled’ or has a ‘bad’ attitude according to bosses and loyal workers. This is common among many southern workers statistically. In some workplaces in the north we might call the latter brown-noses. Sniff.

Guendelsberger realizes that white collar workers have better work conditions than these service or warehouse jobs. It is quite a contrast with her former life as a reporter.  Most white collar workers just get their work done while putting up with less regimentation.  Talking, going to the bathroom, calling home, even surfing the internet and wasting some time are not so crucial.  Most white collars do not have time clocks either. For the workers in the industries detailed here, these bits of freedom are luxuries.  It is a measure of the weakness of the U.S. labor movement and U.S. working-class culture especially in the south that conditions like this are widespread and long-standing.

Guendelsberger does not really understand the concept of surplus value created by labor over wages paid.  Exploitation and super-exploitation is dimly visible hovering in the background, but never made explicit. Nor does she tie it to the workers tied to companies by a software platform - Uber, Task Rabbit, Door Dash, etc., who are basically low-paid day laborers with their own cars, tools or bicycles.

A valuable book for those who have never worked these jobs; for union organizers dealing with the new Taylorism; for people that use Amazon, call centers or McDonalds; for those who work or will work in a low-paid digitally-controlled ‘modern’ job.  It is a peek at the modern U.S. precariat, locked in its Procrustean bed of digital control or what she calls ‘techno Taylorism.’

 Other prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left:  “Nomadland,” “The Precariat,” “The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism,” “Wageless Life,” “Love Your Job?” “Bright-Sided,” “Behind the Kitchen Door,” “Salt Sugar Fat,” “Super-Size Wages!” “Why People Don’t Buy Books” or references to ‘The South.’  

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / December 5, 2020