Smart scheduling replaces stable workforces with unpredictable just-in-time temp shifts

Evidence

”Employability” is synonymous with flexibility. We recall that flexibility, a management watchword since the seventies, means above all the possibility of instantly adapting productive apparatus and labor to the evolution of demand. It thus becomes, in a single stroke, a necessary quality of both managers and employees. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 154 (#expands, via linked claim)

A third strategy is the use of monitoring technologies to force employees to simply work harder: that is, to keep work intensity high. Today, Amazon is the vanguard in this inhuman technology. “I was a picker and we were expected to always pick 400 units [packages] within the hour,” said Juan Espinoza, an Amazon employee interviewed by The Guardian. “I couldn’t handle it. I’m a human being, not a robot.” Ilya Geller, another employee added: “You’re being tracked by a computer the entire time you’re there. You don’t get reported or written up by managers. You get written up by an algorithm…. You’re keenly aware there is an algorithm keeping track of you, making sure you keep going as fast as you can, because if there is too much time lapsed between items, the computer will know this, will write you up, and you will get fired.” The production model of Amazon is based on a constant turnover of personnel who leave due to excessive psycho-physical stress. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 117 (#expands, via linked claim)

The control of time allows for the coordination of activity and, therefore, effective social control. In navigation, time was early fixed on English ships according to the clock of the Greenwich observatory; and no matter where a ship might be in the Atlantic, its chronometer always registered Greenwich time. — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 848 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Monitoring algorithms replace managers in enforcing work intensity — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 117; Flexibility means instantly adapting labor and machinery to market demand — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 154; Control of time enables coordination of activity and social control — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 848 (+2 more)

Related

• Monitoring algorithms replace managers in enforcing work intensity (similarity 0.83)
• Flexibility means instantly adapting labor and machinery to market demand (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Flexibility means instantly adapting labor and machinery to market demand #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 154
• Monitoring algorithms replace managers in enforcing work intensity #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 117
• Control of time enables coordination of activity and social control #expands (0.72) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 848