On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane

by Emily Guendelsberger

By suspending the auto parts to be worked on from a chain that moved the parts down a line of stationary workers, there was no need for the constant individual managerial oversight of Taylorism. It was visually obvious when someone wasn’t keeping up, because unfinished pieces started building up at his station. It was impossible to hide any deviation from the pace of work. And since management controlled the speed of the chain, workers lost any remaining control they had over that pace. Productivity skyrocketed. In seven months, the time it took to produce a Model T fell from twelve and a half hours to an astonishing ninety-three minutes. That year, Ford made more Model Ts than all its competitors put together. By its high point, in 1925, the Crystal Palace churned out nine thousand Model Ts a day. But workers hated it there. One former Highland Park worker described his time there as “a form of hell on earth that turned human beings into driven robots.” Another: “[Ford] attempts to standardize the machines, and so he does with labor.” The wife of another worker was so concerned she actually wrote Ford a letter: “The chain system you have is a slave driver! My God! Mr. Ford. My husband has come home & thrown himself down & won’t eat his supper—so done out! Can’t it be remedied?” Workers hated the assembly line for more than just the physical demands, though. It’s tough to take pride in a job that “a child of three” might do. And tasks were broken down so minutely that, as ...