Samuel van der Swaagh
House 2, Cohort 2
10/18/12
SOSC 111: Journal Response #5
During the fifth week of EoW, we discussed division of labor. In other words, we discussed the assembly line and the division of work. During class we first talked about the social consequences of division of labor. Based on the passage, we saw the negative effects of work compartmentalization: breaking work down into rigid, single tasks or roles. As we saw in the article, Cindy resented her co-workers (she called one of her collogues a retard) because she found herself repeating tasks that seemed had meaningless or counter-productive. In other words, for Cindy, the division of work isolated her from her workers, which caused tension rather than collaboration.
The major portion of class, however, was spent discussing the social, physical, and economic consequences of the assembly line. As in “The Division of Labor and the Division of Laborers,” we discussed how the assembly line can make a work environment controllable, “efficient,” and feasible. Manufacturing companies are abscessed with control. The assembly line allows companies to monitor the flow of production because they can precisely control the task arrangements of their employees. We also learned that the assembly line enables corporations to theoretically identify and eradicate all ‘bumps’ in the system. If a person slacks or makes a mistake in a particular place on the assembly line, the managers will be able to track down the person, the source of the error, because an assembly line arranges and delegates specific roles for all workers. Lastly, I find the assembly line to be dehumanizing in some respects because it eliminates the need for human judgment and stunts innovation. As many people would say, assembly lines turn workers into robots. I think the real issue, however, is not that employers force people to perform strenuous repetitive tasks, but that employees become alienated in their work. With an assembly line, a workers job is merely to do his/her small task, not to help build a product.
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Submitted Version of 10/18/12:
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