229
experience of such factory work,
Braverman challenges official
statistics and governmental
classifications of workers to
demonstrate the progressive
and ongoing “de-skilling” of
the US working class.
So, for example, the notion
that increasing technology
in the workplace calls forth a
more technically proficient and
educationally qualified workforce
is, he argues, simply not true.
Terms like “training,” “skill,” and
“learning” are vague and open to
interpretation, and the amount of
training required to operate factory
and office machinery often takes
only a matter of minutes or, at most,
a few weeks. Merely pointing to
the fact that workers can operate
machinery does not necessarily
mean their skill levels have
increased significantly. Tending
to machinery and knowing how
to operate it—a good example is
learning how to use a photocopier—
does not mean that a worker should
be reclassified as “skilled.”
Moreover, Braverman found that
while general levels of educational
achievement have increased among
the workforce, typically this
has a negative and unintended
consequence for the individual
entering paid employment.
In the course of surveys
and interviews undertaken by
Braverman, it was often found that
the attainment of educational
qualifications made the experience
of factory and office work even more
frustrating, or lacking in fulfillment,
because opportunities for
individuals to utilize and apply
the knowledge obtained from their
schooling simply did not exist.
Greater educational achievement
can lead to a far more acutely
perceived sense of alienation.Progressive skills erosion
Before the Industrial Revolution,
notes Braverman, material
goods were made by skilled and
semiskilled craftsmen and artisans.
Advances in technology had
enabled the scale of industrial
production to reach unprecedented
levels. The capacity for machines
to perform so many of the tasks
hitherto performed manually by
skilled workers meant certain skills
and technical knowledge were no
longer required, while the need for
new competencies and expertise
grew in their place.
Understood in this way, argues
Braverman, automation removes
the need for some skills while
creating a need for different, new
skills in their place. Technological
progress alone does not necessarily
lead to a decline in workers’ skill
levels. Neither does alienation
follow as a direct result.
Braverman was not arguing
nostalgically for a return to the
pre-industrial model of the craft
worker; on the contrary, heacknowledges that automation
can be a positive development. The
effects become wholly negative, he
claims, when automation of the
workplace is coupled with radical
changes to the social relations of
production: the way in which the
total labor process is organized,
managed, and manipulated.
He emphasizes the distinction
between advances in science
and technology and how those
are implemented in the workplace
on the one hand, and changes to
the social relations of production—
the drive for ever-more efficient
ways to organize and divide up
the labor force—on the other.
Just as machines are built to
do jobs in the most efficient way,
the workforce is structured to
increase productivity and profit.
Braverman’s aim is to show that the
embodied knowledge and technical
competencies of skilled workers
have been eroded and forgotten. ❯❯See also: Karl Marx 28–31 ■ Max Weber 38–45 ■ George Ritzer 120–23 ■ Manuel Castells 152–55 ■ Erich Fromm 188 ■
Daniel Bell 224–25 ■ Robert Blauner 232–33
WORK AND CONSUMERISM
The production line at Opel in
1950s’ West Germany. Subdivision of
labor improved efficiency but, claimed
Braverman, such processes de-skilled
and degraded the worker.Industrial processes and...
organization have robbed
the worker of his craft and
its heritage.
Harry Braverman