Newsletter No. 28
NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2005
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The tyranny of efficiency Workers are now being electronically tagged to ‘cut costs and increase efficiency’, as satellite and radio-based computer technology increases supervisors’ power to direct and monitor workers. They can beam orders directly to workers and check where they are, if they are taking unauthorised breaks and work out the shortest time a worker should need to complete a job. This Orwellian technology for intensifying work threatens the total ‘disappearance of disappearance’, where the employee cannot do anything without the employer knowing. Within six months of being introduced into the United Kingdom, 10,000 supermarket employees have been tagged with this United States’ technology. Other monitoring devices are being developed — ones that check clerical ‘efficiency’ by measuring the rate at which they enter keystrokes and satellite technology that monitors productivity in manufacturing jobs (‘Firms tag workers to improve efficiency’) Guardian 7.6.05). |