From 57312344377ac8578b21721b34a6c78a2ca17325 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Valeria Graziano Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2022 12:46:29 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] !publish! --- content/factor/americandepartment.md | 32 +++++++++++++++++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 29 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/factor/americandepartment.md b/content/factor/americandepartment.md index d9c3613..a50b57c 100644 --- a/content/factor/americandepartment.md +++ b/content/factor/americandepartment.md @@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ The Scientific Organization of Work is a book published in 1911 by Frederick Win The word "Taylorism" refers to Taylor's approach to managing industrial plants and it also has a pejorative meaning given that this method appropriates workers' knowledge and skills in order to use these against them. -#The Gilbreths +### The Gilbreths Amongst the new breed of "scientific managers" were a couple of American engineers, Frank Bunker Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth, who became influential efficiency experts by pioneering the Motion Study method. The Gilbreths created a research methodology based on the examination of "work movements," which included filming a worker's actions and body position while keeping track of the time. They called the units of work they measured the therbligs (an anagram of their last name), each one a mere one-thousandth of a second. @@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ While most of the early Taylorist enthusiasts and and time method managers were !(Nelson, Daniel, ed. A mental revolution: Scientific management since Taylor. Ohio State University Press, 1992, p.18)[] -# Henry Ford +### Henry Ford During the late 1910s and 1920s, Henry Ford expanded on Taylor’s concepts using them for the first time in the auto industry and introducing the modern "assembly line”. It is estimated that through the Ford Motor Company, Ford earned an estimated $199 billion in capital, which would make him the ninth richest person in history. Ford incorporated some welfare measures in his management style, apparently keen to lessen the high turnover rate that required several of his departments to hire 300 men each year to fill 100 openings. Thus in 1914 Ford begun paying his workers $5 per day, more than doubling the average pay of the time. In 1926, he also instituted a new 40-hour workweek consisting of five 8-hour days. Real profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and who behaved according to Ford’s liking. @@ -82,7 +82,7 @@ Since the 1930s, manufacturing methods centered primarily on the utilization of [Antonio Gramsci, Americanism and Fordism, from Prison Notebooks, p.303] () -# Methods-Time Measurement (MTM) +### Methods-Time Measurement (MTM) Methods-Time Measurement (MTM) is a copyrighted technique utilized in industrial production processes study the way each manual operation or job is performed and, based on the analysis, to establish a standard time for workers to finish each task. This system takes into account four variables separately: @@ -94,6 +94,32 @@ Methods-Time Measurement (MTM) is a copyrighted technique utilized in industrial The method was first introduced in the USA in the 1948 by H.B. Maynard, JL Schwab and GJ Stegemerten. Today, MTM exists in several variations (such as MTM-1, MTM-2, MTM-3, MTM-UAS, MTM-MEK and MTM-SAM, for instance, some of which are now obsolete. In the original study, constant speed cameras (at a rate of 16 frames per second) were used to record videos of the skilled employees at the Westinghouse Brake and Signal Corporation's factory floor. The movies were then analyzed and categorized into a preset format of Basic Motions by being displayed frame-by-frame. Reach, Grasp, Move, Position, Release, etc. were some of these Basic Motions. A motion was begun on a frame where the hand first began executing it, and it was ended on a frame when the action was finished. This made it possible to determine the duration of each recorded motion in seconds by using a frame count, which was then "leveled" to a standard performance. +## MTM in Italy + +![](static/images/Shake.png) + +Italy was the second country in Western capitalist Europe (after the UK, 1948) to achieve the right to a public healthcare system in 1978. To these days, the Italian national healthcare system remains an odd story of success despite many counter-reforms. As Chiara Giorgi noted, + +> According to the 2017 OECD data, life expectancy at birth in Italy is 83.1 years, compared to the 80.9 years of the European Union average: but the total health expenditure per inhabitant is 2,483 euros, against 2,884 of the average EU (a 15% gap). It is a paradox worth probing that the European country with the longest life expectancy has achieved this result with reduced spending. +> + +[Chiara Giorgi, Rediscovering the roots of public health services. Lessons from Italy, OpenDemocracy, 24 March 2020](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/rediscovering-roots-public-health-services-lessons-italy/) + +However, in the ‘60s, the national health conditions were dire. Italy had an average was of one death in the workplace per hour and one accident per minute (by comparison, today there are 3 deaths per day and 800.000 accidents per year). So in the ‘60s, as the country was undergoing massive industrialization, the idea of a “class war” was really a reality that workers could witness every day. And these were only numbers linked to direct deaths at work, without taking into consideration the indirect effects of environmental degradation and chronic conditions that begun to flare up at the time. + +In Italy, the first experiments with MTM methods are introduced by a company called BEDAUX CONSULTANTS. In the early 1970s, Luigi Firrao authored a long exposè for the newspaper *Il Manifesto*, in which he retraced the companies’ early moves: + +> The reorganization of work based on the methods and systems of the MTM constitutes the only real response of the Italian patronage to the results achieved with the struggle of the working class. All the talk about plant automation and improving productivity by investing in machines that yield more without increasing the worker's effort is just smoke and theory compared to the reality of the factory as it is today. + +> The most important consultancy firm on work organisation operating in Italy today is Bedaux Consultants, which applies all the systems we have listed above in its interventions for the reorganisation of production.[...] Bedaux’s parent company, of course, is in the United States. In 1927 the Italian Bedaux was founded, whose presidency was assumed by the elder Giovanni Agnelli (the founder of FIAT) and the first work organisation interventions took place precisely at FIAT and Pirelli. + +> Since 1966, Bedaux Consultants has been headed by engineer Roberto Amadi, who trained at Alfa Romeo and Magneti Marelli. Bedaux's most recent publication lists one by one the companies in which it has intervened to rationalise exploitation systems. + +> The companies for which Bedaux has worked include: BUITONI, BARILLA, LAZZARONI, PERNIGOTTI, PERUGINA, SPERLARI, SUPERGA footwear, ITALCANTIERI (IRI) paper mills BINDA, STERZI and DONIZELLI; pottery POZZI and SBORDONI, engineering companies such as MAGNETI MARELLI, FIVRE, MAGRINI, AERFER, ALFA ROMEO, ANSALDO, BREDA, CMF, CMI, FMI, SALMOIRAGHI, S.GIORGIO PRA, LAGOMARSINO, CEMFOND, SANT'EUSTACCHIO, SPICA, SUNBEECAMICA ; steel companies including DALMINE and SCI; among textiles COTONIFICIO CANTONI, DE ANGELI FRUA, LANEROSSI, MCM + +> In addition to this, Bedaux organises a large number of courses to train timekeepers, time and method officials, etc. Bedaux is not alone. More than thirty other companies in Italy organise workers’ exploitation as external consultants, while many companies are frantically trying to hire their own specialists for the same purpose. + +![](bib:3be4c464-56d5-440d-96e8-6bbb8c5d5598)