bosgek
11th August 2009, 13:18
Hello everybody,
My name is Frank and I come from Leeuwarden, the Netherlands and am 23 years old. The goal in my life is simple: I only want to produce pure, tasty and healthy food for the masses. Therefore have chosen to spend my working life in a factory as food technologist, for which I'm currently studying (now B. Eng. next year probably for M. Eng.). Unfortunally for me, I now only know how to produce products that trick the consumers into buying something that resembles food, but is really a composition of cheap chemical substances. So, yes: I was bound to become one of those dreaded bourgeois factory managers / owners.
I recently worked in a factory for 6 months as an intern assigned to make a measurement system for productivity of the production processes. At the same time a lot of projects were started (under the banner of TPM if you know it) to increase productivity. One worker was very unmotivated and worked exactly 480 minutes per shift. But after someone gave him the assignment to look for and improve production performance on his workplace, he lived up (you could see it in his eyes). These motivation effects on workers are common. He was so enthusiastic, he even worked pro bono outside his shift to see the change of productivity. He didn’t have the nicest workplace either: cold, noisy and stressful. He saved the company twice his yearly pay within 2 months without significant investment. Within a couple of months after he changed his workplace, he got laid off as part of the capital that produced a product that was no longer needed.
As you can imagine, I was hardly in any position to change anything about the situation (I did try). This was the main reason why I concluded that capitalism is a inhumane system. I looked at communism and imagined how the factory I worked in would be if it were worker run, after workers would understand how the factory was run. Perhaps the same decision would be made, perhaps more trouble would be done to sell the products anyway, perhaps the amount of FTE on the department would drop and the loss spread among the workers. Whatever the case, I would respect a consensus among workers more then the plant manager deciding that the guy that produces the least tons per FTE has to go.
So I don't have a clear political conviction to one form of communism or anarchism. I've mainly come to the forum to read and ask questions at first to get clear what it's all about and some less posting about as I know nothing about some matters.
My name is Frank and I come from Leeuwarden, the Netherlands and am 23 years old. The goal in my life is simple: I only want to produce pure, tasty and healthy food for the masses. Therefore have chosen to spend my working life in a factory as food technologist, for which I'm currently studying (now B. Eng. next year probably for M. Eng.). Unfortunally for me, I now only know how to produce products that trick the consumers into buying something that resembles food, but is really a composition of cheap chemical substances. So, yes: I was bound to become one of those dreaded bourgeois factory managers / owners.
I recently worked in a factory for 6 months as an intern assigned to make a measurement system for productivity of the production processes. At the same time a lot of projects were started (under the banner of TPM if you know it) to increase productivity. One worker was very unmotivated and worked exactly 480 minutes per shift. But after someone gave him the assignment to look for and improve production performance on his workplace, he lived up (you could see it in his eyes). These motivation effects on workers are common. He was so enthusiastic, he even worked pro bono outside his shift to see the change of productivity. He didn’t have the nicest workplace either: cold, noisy and stressful. He saved the company twice his yearly pay within 2 months without significant investment. Within a couple of months after he changed his workplace, he got laid off as part of the capital that produced a product that was no longer needed.
As you can imagine, I was hardly in any position to change anything about the situation (I did try). This was the main reason why I concluded that capitalism is a inhumane system. I looked at communism and imagined how the factory I worked in would be if it were worker run, after workers would understand how the factory was run. Perhaps the same decision would be made, perhaps more trouble would be done to sell the products anyway, perhaps the amount of FTE on the department would drop and the loss spread among the workers. Whatever the case, I would respect a consensus among workers more then the plant manager deciding that the guy that produces the least tons per FTE has to go.
So I don't have a clear political conviction to one form of communism or anarchism. I've mainly come to the forum to read and ask questions at first to get clear what it's all about and some less posting about as I know nothing about some matters.