The Corporate Speed Up in the US

There is a good article in Mother Jones on the speed up that is forcing American workers to endlessly produce more with less creating corporate profits but in an business environment where the workers never get any of the benefits of "increasing productivity":

Webster's defines speedup as "an employer's demand for accelerated output without increased pay," and it used to be a household word. Bosses would speed up the line to fill a big order, to goose profits, or to punish a restive workforce. Workers recognized it, unions (remember those?) watched for and negotiated over it—and, if necessary, walked out over it.

But now we no longer even acknowledge it—not in blue-collar work, not in white-collar or pink-collar work, not in economics texts, and certainly not in the media (except when journalists gripe about the staff-compacted-job-expanded newsroom). Now the word we use is "productivity," a term insidious in both its usage and creep. The not-so-subtle implication is always: Don't you want to be a productive member of society? Pundits across the political spectrum revel in the fact that US productivity (a.k.a. economic output per hour worked) consistently leads the world. Yes, year after year, Americans wring even more value out of each minute on the job than we did the year before. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Except what's good for American business isn't necessarily good for Americans. We're not just working smarter, but harder. And harder. And harder, to the point where the driver is no longer American industriousness, but something much more predatory.

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To understand how we got here, first let's consider the Ben Franklin-Horatio Alger-Henry Ford ur-myth: To balk at working hard—really, really hard—brands you as profoundly un-American. Who besides the archetypical Japanese salaryman derives so much of his self-image from self-sacrifice on the job? Slacker is one of the most biting insults available in polite company.

And so we kowtow to—nay, embrace—a cultural maxim that just happens to be enormously convenient to corporate America. "Our culture has encouraged me to only feel valuable if I'm barely hanging on to my sanity," one friend emailed as we were working on this article. In fact, each time we mentioned this topic to someone—reader, source, friend—they first took pains to say: I'm not lazy. I love my job. I come from a long line of hard workers. But then it would pour out of them—the fatigue, the isolation, the guilt.

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In all the chatter about our "jobless recovery," how often does someone explain the simple feat by which this is actually accomplished? US productivity increased twice as fast in 2009 as it had in 2008, and twice as fast again in 2010: workforce down, output up, and voilá! No wonder corporate profits are up 22 percent since 2007, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute. To repeat: Up. Twenty-two. Percent.

This is nothing short of a sea change. As University of California-Berkeley economist Brad DeLong notes, until not long ago, "businesses would hold on to workers in downturns even when there wasn't enough for them to do—would put them to work painting the factory—because businesses did not want to see their skilled, experienced workers drift away and then have to go through the expense and loss of training new ones. That era is over. These days firms take advantage of downturns in demand to rationalize operations and increase labor productivity, pleading business necessity to their workers."

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We got to this point because of decades of political decisions. To name but three: turning over the financing of elections to wealthy interests; making it harder for unions to organize; deregulating Wall Street (and completely wimping out on reregulating it after the financiers nearly destroyed the global economy). And even after having watched these policies bring the global economy to its knees, Mitch McConnell & Co. say that any questioning of corporate power is tantamount to rolling out the tumbrels. Please.

The corporations are not going to spontaneously back off the pressure on labour. It will require organizing to pressure politicians for more labour-friendly laws. It will require a revival of unions to counter-balance the power of corporations. It will require a lot of dialog among Americans where people admit that they've put put over a barrel by business and exploited because of their willingness to constantly "work a little harder" to help business get over its latest "problem". Labour does this, but companies never return the favour by easing back or increasing wages or by providing better benefits. It has been all take and no give in the supposed give-and-take of labour negotiation. It will only be fixed when labour wakes up and demands that 40 years of giving in to business leads to "payback time" for labour.