Work is Becoming More Like Prison As Some Workers Forced to Wear Electronic Bands

[B5C]

Work is Becoming More Like Prison As Some Workers Forced to Wear Electronic Bands That Track Everything They Do (Including Bathroom Breaks)



Grocery giant TESCO has strapped electronic armbands to their warehouse workers to measure their productivity.

The human body, with its need for rest, nutrition and hydration, is such an inefficient tool for capitalist production. But while machines are unlikely to replace human workers anytime soon, new technologies can deftly strip workers of their humanity!


The Irish Independent [/URL]reports that grocery giant TESCO has strapped electronic armbands to their warehouse workers to measure their productivity, tracking their actions so closely that management knows when they briefly pause to drink from a water fountain or take a bathroom break. These unforgivable lapses in productivity impact workers' performance score, which management then apparently uses to terrify them into working faster.

"The devices give a set amount of time for a task, such as 20 minutes to load packets of soft drinks. If they did it in 20 minutes, they would get 100pc, but would get 200pc if they were twice as fast," writes the Independent. Although TESCO denied that bathroom breaks impact productivity scores, one former staffer the Independent spoke with said he got a "surprisingly lower" score when he took a bathroom break.

"Sometimes, management would call staff to an office and tell them they had to do better if their scores were low."

"I had really easy assignments and when I'd come back after a break, I would get a horrendous score and wonder why," he said.

He added that since the introduction of the device workers faced increasing pressure to produce more and more.

But working people close to death has some downsides for companies. Studies show that work stress is linked to physical and mental ailments, from sleep deprivation to chronic disease. In the end, stressed, sick workers saddle companies both with rising health costs (for those that actually pay for employee health expenses) and the costs of high turnover.


[url]http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/work-becoming-more-prison-some-workers-forced-wear-electronic-bands-track-everything (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tesco-accused-of-using-electronic-armbands-to-monitor-its-staff-8493952.html)






Squeezing the worker to help produce more capital. The article I posted is a small section. Use the link to read more.

[MarxArchist]

Technological Taylorism. On a related note a few weeks back the Huffington Post posted an article showing how unemployment is skyrocketing whilst the prison labor industry is booming. A week later the US attacked North Korea for having labor camps. Anyhow, the worst years of my life took place under the thumb of an extreme version of the division of labor under scientific management. My boss died of cancer. I dint attend his funeral.

[Questionable]

Why aren't the workers striking over this? I can't believe anybody would tolerate this kind of shit, I would quit on the spot.

[MarxArchist]

Why aren't the workers striking over this? I can't believe anybody would tolerate this kind of shit, I would quit on the spot.
High unemployment means there are far and few between jobs available so workers are attacked by capitalists, we're squeezed, and, if we don't like it they'll just hire one of the millions of people who is desperate enough to 'appreciate' the 'opportunity'.

[Questionable]

High unemployment means there are far and few between jobs available so workers are attacked by capitalists, we're squeezed, and, if we don't like it they'll just hire one of the millions of people who is desperate enough to 'appreciate' the 'opportunity'.

I understand that but that really doesn't do us any favors. If we just keep letting the capitalists push us and push us because "otherwise we'll lose our jobs!" then they're simply going to win. Class struggle doesn't happen by itself.

[Captain Ahab]

Get punched enough times and you become desensitized to the pain.

[MarxArchist]

I understand that but that really doesn't do us any favors. If we just keep letting the capitalists push us and push us because "otherwise we'll lose our jobs!" then they're simply going to win. Class struggle doesn't happen by itself.
They have "Fresh and Easy" supermarkets where I live but I havent seen any workers wearing slave bracelets. There's been talk, for a while now, that they're going to shut down the "Fresh and Easy" American stores. This may be an issue for our British comrades. Micromanagement in general is something both large and small capitalists do to maximize profits. From the small business owner who has one or two employees to the large production facilities to office jobs. In this generic sense ya, I think we've been fighting this as a general part of capitalism itself. It's getting worse and worse but many workers do indeed fight back (outside of any organized socialist resistance). I lived through it and it was actually the spring board for me to accept socialism as a viable alternative to capitalism. The experience is what "radicalized" me in my early 20's. It was a brutal labor intensive experience that has left me partially disabled.

Historical side note: Lenin and Trotsky, if we're to be honest, went down this road as well. Lenin with Taylorism and Trotsky with his militarized organization and supervision of labor.

[Questionable]

Historicalside note: Lenin and Trotsky, if we're to be honest, went down this road as well. Lenin with Taylorism and Trotsky with his militarized organization and supervision of labor.

Whatever authoritative measures they took happened under totally different circumstances and cannot be compared to grocery owners decided to tag their employees.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

You know, I'd be sorely tempted to wear a fake/non-functioning band while leaving my functioning one attached to the underside of a shopping trolley popular with customers or something.

That is, if I didn't decide to just get fired as soon as I found out they were using such things.

[MarxArchist]

Whatever authoritative measures they took happened under totally different circumstances and cannot be compared to grocery owners decided to tag their employees.
OK when Marxists do it. Bad when capitalists do it. I disagree but don't want to argue about it (probably too late for that). I shouldn't have even put that in the post, only reason I did was a small thought in the back of my head thinking we should clear up our past before we go trying to build a communist future. Of course efficiency for Lenin and Trotsky meant furthering the cause of communism and efficiency for capitalists is furthering the egotistical cause of profit for the self. This is more of a systemic component of capitalism though. In order to compete with other capitalists production must be maximized with the least expense possible. With the tendency for the rates of profit to fall combined with global crisis capitalists are going to wrench down, so to speak, on workers (whilst the state facilitates austerity). I'm hoping this brutal process will radicalize huge portions of the working class. I'm with ya here.

[Captain Ahab]

Do you really have to attack Lenin and Trotsky in a thread that isn't about them or their actions? Doesn't that bring the risk of thread derailment?

[RadioRaheem84]

This is like Chaplins Modern Times!

Good lord, the media and the internet libertarians love a good bad government story (Which is good) but hardly ever report about stuff like this. Where's the liberty? Oh yea, I forgot they have the freedom to not work there. :laugh:

[MarxArchist]

Do you really have to attack Lenin and Trotsky in a thread that isn't about them or their actions? Doesn't that bring the risk of thread derailment?
Read my second post. Thanks. Edit- read my forth post, sorry. Thanks and sorry (lol)

[Lord Hargreaves]

How does the wristband measure "productivity"? What is it, some kind of walkmeter? Does it measure heart rate or calorie burn or something? The whole thing seems like bullshit.

In supermarkets workers already have their productivity measured, as the checkout machines keep track of how many products are scanned through per minute. I personally work at one (Morrisons, in the UK) and I've been called on my low rate before.

Then of course there are the electronic automated clock-in machines most of us will be familiar with, supermarket or not. The personnel department has the ability to know if anyone dares to be ten minutes late for a shift. Then, if you have a set amount of contract hours per week, you can get called to one side if you have the temerity to stay on at work an extra half hour to make sure all your set tasks were completed properly (again, happened to me). How subversive I was being, I think you'll agree :rolleyes:

So yeah, none of it surprises me. Especially a supermarket like Tesco - you expect shit like this from them.

[tuwix]

Work is Becoming More Like Prison As Some Workers Forced to Wear Electronic Bands That Track Everything They Do.

The work from the Great Crisis in the twentieth century especially the work in office is more to control people than to produce anything in so-called the West.. As well, as prisons...

[bricolage]

Others found the pressure intense. Several former workers said the handheld computers, which look like clunky scientific calculators with handles and big screens, gave them a real-time indication of whether they were running behind or ahead of their target and by how much. Managers could also send text messages to these devices to tell workers to speed up, they said. “People were constantly warned about talking to one another by the management, who were keen to eliminate any form of time-wasting,” one former worker added.

“You’re sort of like a robot, but in human form,” said the Amazon manager. “It’s human automation, if you like.”http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ed6a985c-70bd-11e2-85d0-00144feab49a.html#slide3

[bcbm]

more prison like? work has always been prison like, the first factories were not unintentionally very similar to the first prisons.

[bricolage]

"Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"

[MarxArchist]

"Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"
Discipline and Punish!!!