HRM : HISTORICAL CONTEXT

PROPOSITION

HUMAN CHOICE AND BEHAVIOUR IS GOVERNED BY INSTITUTIONAL

CONTEXT

TRANSITION FROM AGRARIAN TO INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

‘DOUBLY FREE’ Freed from Legal Constraints of

Serfdom and Slavery Alienated from the Means of

Production Free to Buy and Sell Labour Power Control Became the Central Issue

ORIGINS OF FACTORY SYSTEM

ORGANISED UNDER ONE ROOF AT THE SAME TIME

DIVISION OF LABOUR ‘DOUBLY UNFREE’

Capitalist could Exercise an Arbitrary Authority at Work

No Choice but to Sell their Labour Power

WHAT DO BOSSES DO? STEPHEN MARGLIN

THE ORIGINS AND FUNCTIONS OF HIERARCHY IN CAPITALIST

PRODN.

The social function of hierarchical work organisation is not technical efficiency but accumulation

The capitalist divn. of labour guaranteed to the entrepreneur an essential role in the production process as integrator of separate efforts of his workers into a marketable product, thus assigning a portion of these proceeds to enlarging the means of production.

Substitution of the capitalist for a workers’ control of the work process and the quantity of output

Change in the workman’s choice from one of how much to work and produce based on his relative preferences for leisure and goods to whether or not to work at all

The guild workman had no intermediary between him and the market, he generally sold a product not his labour

Smith in Wealth of Nations had three arguments for dividing labour as finely as mkt. will allow

Increase of dexterity Setup time: implies separation of

tasks and duration of activity, not specialisation

Invention of m/cs: “the man whose life is spent in

performing a few simple operations… has no occasion to … exercise his invention in finding out expedients for difficulties.”

Smith’s Pin Manufacture One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a

third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into eighteen distinct operations,….I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men ….. could make upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently…. they could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day…..

Marglin’s Counter to Smith A workman with his wife and children

could have proceeded from task to task, first drawing out enough wire for hundreds of thousand of pins, then straightening it, then cutting it, and so on with each successive operation, thus realizing the advantages of dividing the overall production process into separate tasks

The Spectator, 1866

Associations of workmen could manage industry with success…..but they did not leave a clear place for the masters. Defect for three reasons: Money in England is concentrated in a

few hands Business ability Natural genius for limited monarchy

Marglin’s Basic Proposition Discipline and supervision reduced costs

without being technologically superior. Disciplining the work force meant a larger output in return for a greater input of labour not more output for the same input.

Particular forms that technological change took were shaped and determined by factory organization

CONDITIONS OF WORK Factory Labour Consisted of “the Scum of Every

Class and Every Occupation” (Marglin, 1974) I turn jigger, and run moulds. I come at 6.

Sometimes I come at 4. I worked all night last night, till 6 o’clock this morning. I have not been in bed since the night before last. There were eight or nine other boys working last night. All but one have come this morning. I get 3 shilling and six pence. I do not get any more for working at night. I worked two nights last week. (12-year-old child worker in the potteries of Staffordshire, England).

Description of the wage payment at a textile factory in Germany around the 1840s The suffering faces of these wretches, the

silent agony in their features which cried vengeance louder than the yelling of a revolutionary mob, the joy of one who hurried home with wages intact, the sobs of another who suddenly saw himself cheated of half his earnings, the rasping voice of the foreman who waved a stick threateningly if anyone was impertinent enough to rear his head indignantly like a crushed worm, the swearing of the clerks who called for peace and quiet lest they miscalculate a single

Description (contd.) farthing, the grinning book-keeper who, in

his brutal, lewd way, gloated with delight over the whole proceedings, and finally the chink of money, of sordid metal, which was the reason for the enactment of this whole performance. Really, the factory counting house on this day, as on every Saturday, presented a spectacle which could not be grosser, more vulgar or more hideous if one found it in a brothel, a robbers’ lair or a gambling den (Kuczynski, 1975: 76).

Conditions at Home

“In New York you could see the poor lying in the streets with the garbage. There were no sewers in the slums, and filthy water drained into yards and alleys, into the cellars where the poorest of the poor lived bringing with it a typhoid epidemic in 1837, typhus in 1842.”

Role of State

Massachusetts judge decided an injured Worker did not deserve compensation because by signing contract, he is agreeing to take certain risks.

THE BACKLASH

‘Profession’ of ‘proletarian’: Blanqui Spread far and wide to tens of

millions of workers in 1832 in France

Railway ‘navvies’ of Germany as quoted by Wilhem Wolff: If we are ill and weak, we may lie down and

chew potatoes – if there are any – or die on a dung-heap for all the rich man cares. But there is one advantage in all this for us. We have flocked together in our thousands, we have come to know one another, and in the whole long business of give and take, most of us have become more sensible…. (W)e are the real supporters of the wealthy, we need only to be unwilling to work, and they will be compelled to beg us for their bread and butter or starve, unless they are willing to work themselves (Kuczynski, 1975: 215).

Early TUs Tonny Ramsay, a pioneer of trade unionism

among the Durham miners in the middle of the 19th century:Lads unite and better your condition.When eggs are scarce, eggs are dear;When men are scarce, men are dear (Morton, 1974)

Early TUs were formed to protect “standards of living or the dignity of their crafts” Luddites – M/c Breakers

Civil Society TUs had a key role in creating the

parliamentary democracy based on universal adult suffrage - Chartist Movement 1838 : second petition signed by 3.3 m -

massive strike Militant working class movement was a

primary force behind the institution of free and popular press, cheaply available to the working class, in the 19th century England.

Role of State (England)

1842 : 10 Hour Day Act 1890 : Demand For 8 Hour Day 1893 : Labour Party Formed

Members Returned to the House of Commons in 1906

Role of State (USA) Courts Called TUs Conspiracies to

Restrain Trade “In this favoured land of law and liberty, the road to advancement is open to all --. Every American knows that or ought to know that he has no better friend than the laws and that he needs no artificial combination for his protection . They are of foreign origin and I am led to believe mainly upheld by foreigners.”

References

Hobsbawm E 1988, Age of revolution

Zinn H., People’s history of USA Kuczynski, J. 1975, Rise of the

working class Morton, A L 1974, People’s history of

England Marx 1978, Capital Vol. 1

References (contd.)

Engels, F. 1876 The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man

Linder, M. & Nygaard, I. 1998 Void where prohibited

Dickens, Oliver Twist Sinclair, Upton The Jungle