7 minute read
How ‘Automation’ Made America Work Harder
SURFACE MINING
How ‘Automation’ Made America Work Harder
computers – used for smart jobs over hard jobs cuttIng down on office toil – achieved the other way around! A paradigm shift! The McKinsey & Company consultancy forecasted in 2018, in a full-color, 141-page study, that automation is ushering in a revolution.
The frequency with which executives in business, and those who run technology giants and write about these businesses, have declared the arrival of a new epoch in history. Robots and artificial intelligence are anticipated to create many, if not most, of today's workforce out of work. Or, according to these experts, our society is teetering on the edge of chaos, only to be reconstituted again. When they saw the most recent report from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), they must have been shocked to see that this prediction has been debunked. As was noted, between 2005 and 2018, the United States experienced a stunning decline in worker productivity; average growth 60% lower than the overall average from 1998 to 2004. Interesting to note is, machines must have driven increased worker productivity, not lead to a stagnant workforce!
In contrast to management consultants and researchers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is usually reserved in its judgments. But this time, the researchers found an inevitable economic consequence of the last 20 years….an enormous setback to the bright idea that we've now stepped into an era of automation and smart work calling for better technological growth and progress. The absurdity of underemployment plus unemployment, co-existing
with overworking, occurs in the majority of the population. In the past in the United States, this has accompanied all public debates of "automation," the contention that machines will eventually supplant human work.
In the middle of the 20th century, automotive and computer industry managers often used "automation" as a euphemism to refer to new and exciting technical advances. In reality, however, “Automation” was an ideological creation, one that has done nothing to help labor. The concept of “automation” has, from its very start, described not the replacement of employees, but the structured pressing of them!
So because of this, what employers term “automation” has continued to make life more challenging and unappreciated for Americans. A new technology described as “automation” has been utilized by employers to degrade, increase, and speed up human work.
They've used new technologies to hide the fact that crucial human labor is still there (such as self-service cash registers or automated answering systems, where customers do tasks like answering the phone themselves). When one autoworker claimed in the 1950s that automation is a synonym for more work and more minor jobs, a second noted that automation would not mean less work. On the contrary, it will be more work, including man serving the machine at much higher operation speeds!
Automation poses as much danger as it offers hope. The advent of the computer best shows it! Digital computers developed during World War II were used to create the first programmable electronic digital computers to crack Nazi codes. For the most part, computers remained linked with advanced research and cutting-edge engineering until the early 1950s, working on making atomic bombs!
It was far from clear how a business could earn money with an electronic digital computer at that time. Computers offered companies nothing at all; instead, the industry was more concerned with padding their earnings than deciphering adversary ciphers.
In the hope of building a computer industry to profit from it, management theorists had to develop a market where none previously existed. Such a name on the list is John Diebold, whose book “Automation” in 1952 popularized the word “automation” and demonstrated that the electronic digital computer could handle information. The Diebold Corporation stated that most clerical processes had been built, considering the range of human limitations. He assured bosses of a new generation of offices where computers would allow workers to move away from human limitations by doing paperwork more quickly and consistently.
Office bosses of that era found this message intriguing—even if it was based on assumptions about sheer calculating capacity and flawless mechanical assistants, neither of which were “can’t do without them” to their work environment! Nevertheless, they were thinking of unionization. An unprecedented number of less salary clerical employees were brought on to staff U.S. offices after World War II. The United States became a worldwide superpower (whom employers could manage with less pay thanks to the sexist norms in the workplace). The clerical workers almost doubled between 1947 and 1956, from 4.5 million to 9 million individuals. The percentage of female
SOLVING YOUR MOST COMPLEX CHALLENGES.
With SEH, you are a true partner and collaborator.
Engineers | Architects | Planners | Scientists 800.325.2055 | sehinc.com/subscribe
SURFACE MINING
wage earners who were clerical workers increased to 20% by the mid-1940s.
Even small businesses have been impacted by the rise in low-wage clerical work in the office suite. In addition, the number of payrolls was rising, and offices progressively looked more like a factory floor than a refuge for managers. There was an uptick in complaints about workplace restlessness. Therefore, in white-collar work, in the business consultancy reports, with titles such as "White-Collar Restiveness—a Growing Challenge," they purchased computers hoping that they might "automate" office labor and put an end to all such problems or future threats.
While they would have liked for computers to decrease the number of clerical employees needed to keep an office viable, it just didn't happen. Until the 1980s, the number of clerical employees in the U.S. and the quantity of paperwork increased.
He said that computers in the workplace increased paperwork, which resulted in a record-breaking number of clerks and key-punch operators. While computers could process information rapidly, data entry was still performed by human hands using keypunch machines. Data that was keypunched was then inputted into a machine for processing in machine-readable format by human labor once again.
Still, the management was unable to do away with the need for human labor in office work. So they resorted back to what they had done since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution: they put machines in place to minimize jobs for human employees to save money by making workers' employment more dispensable and also more mechanical, in turn less paid! Also known as "scientific management," employers back in the 20th century recommended and timed workers' movements at their machines to the hundredth of a second, all in the name of efficiency.
So, where they referred to the practice as “automation” and instead of saving human labor, the electronic digital computer sped it up and increased its intensity, at the same time, according to one insurance company administrative worker, “Everything is moving at such a quick pace now!”
Describing such a typical scenario, Mary Roberge, who worked for a significant Massachusetts insurance firm in the 1950s, said the firm provided 20 female clerical employees for every male senior in her workplace. The clerical staff known as the Card Punchers punched, stamped, and refiled the never-ending pile of IBM cards every day. There were no breaks throughout the day.
Therefore there were very retrained and guarded bathroom and coffee breaks. More and more American businesses replaced professional, well-paid secretarial positions with lower-skilled, lower-paid clerical ones. Of the individuals who worked with computers in the 1950s and 1960s, three out of five were low compensated administrative support employees working on the digital computer.
Although it was apparent, managers of companies and computer makers alike said that no one was doing the job and that the computer was solely responsible for everything. Those administrative tasks were becoming “automated” to achieve their agenda of less pay and more work from the human workforce!
One IBM advertisement took it so far to claim that IBM machines could work competently replacing humans, giving them time to think! It sounded pleasant to the ear in fancy words but was a cut-throat for many workers caught in this situation. Machines should do their functions, but humans should retain their original thought. The only thing it did was it sounded charming! The American workplace defined “automation” as the process of having more and more humans compelled to operate like machines. Often, this made it possible for companies to recruit fewer employees because of sectors like car manufacturing, coal mining, and meatpacking, where one person now does the job of two people. In other cases, new employees were necessary, such as for office work.
This remains the story of “automation” today.
We thrive on challenges
golder.com
ADVERTISING INDEX
Barr Engineering........................... 13 CR Meyer ...................................... 25 FloLevel Technologies ................. 17 Fryberger....................................... 13 General Equipment Supplies ....... 05 Global Minerals Engineering ....... 44 Golder Associates........................ 45
Lake Superior Chapter ISEE......... 45 Malton Electric Company ............ 45 ME Elecmetal ............................... 07
Minnesota Power ......................... 21
Mielke Electric Works .................. 23
Naylor Pipe ................................... 48 Neo Solutions............................... 33
Northern Engine & Supply............ 45 Optiro ............................................ 02 SEH ............................................... 43
