Labor

Reading history like this and observing my own workplaces, I’ve been completely disabused of the notion that most of the indignities and petty crimes committed against workers have anything at all to do with increasing or maintaining profits.

I think profit concerns are at the bottom of the list in most cases for the managerial class.

Power relations better explain what’s happening in the linked story and in modern office environments.

Open office plans harm productivity and thus profit. How to explain them, then? Power. The managerial MBA class wants to exert power over those they’ve “worked hard” to be better than. They want to feel like a manor lord watching from a high casement while the peasants toil below.

Most companies being against people working from home, even a day or two a week? Power again.

Most of the harms that companies seem determined to inflict on their staff actually harm productivity and profit. But the people who tend to be in charge of such organizations don’t get placed in those positions because they are motivated by money, for the most part. No, they are motivated by wishing to be atop the hierarchy. Therefore ceding any power to those they deem lesser than they are — such as someone having their own office or working from home — invests that power in the worker and denies it to the manager.

I agree that this makes no sense but because all that the managerial types understand are zero sum games, by their logic individual offices and other proven productivity enhancers subtract from their own power.

Where I currently work, I think I could pretty easily increase profits by 10-15% with no net job reduction. But these ideas would definitely reduce the power of management to control worker’s lives and would increase worker satisfaction immensely (while reducing hours somewhat), so it will never happen.