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the nineteenth century,” a union boss told Reuters. Second on the list was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose company employs “secret police” also known as the “rat-catching team,” to spy on workers…’ (p. 32).
dismissal. In a deregulated labour market with deliberately
Things are no different at Facebook (p. 35) and Tesla
straight. Fear –whether of pain or losing a job– does strange
(p. 37). Perhaps this has been so ever since ‘Taylor…the
things to decision making. Fear overtakes our brains and
shameless fraud’ (p. 52) invented what he mislabelled
makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but saving
Scientific Management. Today, those who relentlessly
our skin’ (p. 75). What saving your skin means has been
push Taylorism and other instruments of control – usually
outlined by Holocaust survivor Jean Améry (1980). Améry
disguised as efficiency – are called MBA graduates.Without
has described what it means to be possessed by fear and
much of a scientific underpinning, MBA graduates thrive
how it determines what one does. On an incomparable
on pure managerial power (Stewart 2009; Magretta 2012).
milder note, Dan Lyons writes:
In recent years, ‘the MBA has become the most popular master’s degree in the United States, with universities churning out 185,000 of them each year’ (p. 53). Some administer companies and corporations while others become management consultants. ‘Former management consultant Matthew Stewart recalls his first job interview in which he was tested on his ability to bullshit: “The purpose of the exercise was to see how easily I could talk about a subject about which I knew almost nothing on the basis of facts that were almost entirely fictional. It was, I realised in retrospect, an excellent introduction to management consulting.” Like Frederick Taylor at the beginning of the 20th century, today’s management consultants still get paid a lot of money but don’t actually produce anything. An old joke goes that a management consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time – then keeps your watch’ (p. 53).
weakened trade unions, employees are increasingly open to managerial punishment. Like the rat, they live in fear. Therefore, ‘people who are scared basically can’t think
‘if you’re living in fear of losing your job, then all of your decisions and actions are geared to preserving your job rather than taking risks…but that’s actually the exact wrong thing to do. In a time of uncertainty, taking risks and trying new things would actually be in your best interest…but that’s difficult when you’re afraid of losing your job…for a lot of people, the workplace really does feel like a Skinner box, where you wander around like a rat in one of B. F. Skinner’s cages trying to figure out how to get rewards and how to avoid punishment…it’s like you’re in a box, and you have no control over what’s happening to you… it’s controlled by experimenters outside. You learn to associate certain places in that box with good and bad things…fearful rats can only think about one thing – how to get out of the box and stop getting shocked’ (p. 76). Inside managerial regimes, fear is not the only thing
These are the apologists and ideological demagogues
that makes workers unhappy. There is also ‘money…
of management, corporations, and capitalism. Over time,
change, and dehumanisation’ (p. 83). A recent example of
Taylor and his entourage of faith-fools, believers, and
installing fear is IBM. At IBM,‘CEO, Ginni Rometty, earned
management consultants changed work in manufacturing
$33 million in 2016...for the past few years Rometty
forever. In post-manufacturing industries like office work,
has been busy slashing jobs, especially targeting older
the knowledge industry, and the service industry,Taylorism
workers…from 2012 to 2017, when IBM was firing all
is slowly taking a backseat. In OECD countries, the days of
those American workers, the company was turning hefty
Taylor’s pig iron carrier Schmidt are all but over. The key
profits and in fact generated $92 billion in cash’ (p. 85).
to understanding work in the knowledge industry is B.
Making $92 billion while paying a CEO $33 million is a
F. Skinner’s behaviourism (Chomsky 1959). Consequently,
good deal for capital. It is not such a great deal for workers.
nearly all management textbooks, textbooks on HRM,
Overall, job insecurity comes along with falling wages
textbooks on organisational behaviour, and most definitely
(USA) and wage stagnation (UK).Today,‘income inequality
every textbook on organisational psychology, contain
in the US has reached a level not seen since 1929…real
the obligatory chapter on behaviourism. Albeit, these
wages (adjusted for inflation) have been flat or down for
are often disguised as reward management, motivational
decades. Millennials earn 20% less than their parents did
theory, behaviour modification, etc. In short, managers
at the same stage of their lives,’ (p. 91). Neoliberalism will
are trained to carry out the program of Skinner.Therefore,
make sure that this will continue until something gives
everyone at work is treated like a rat to be rewarded for
way (Hanauer 2014).
achieving a managerially set task.
Because of decades of following neoliberalism’s
Not surprisingly,‘work is becoming more and more like
ideology of weakening trade unions, ‘the middle class
a Skinner box’ (p. 75). Skinner’s rat was punished with
itself is shrinking – from 61% of Americans in 1971 to 50%
electric shocks. Today’s workers are punished through
in 2015’ (p. 91). This will continue with neoliberalism’s
88
Working people into misery Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer
vol. 61, no. 2, 2019