This article is based on notes of a lecture given by Mike Cooley, President of the AUEW Technical and Supervisory Section, in London on the 27th March 1971.
The proletarianisation of white-collar workers can only be fully understood when seen in the broader context of the effect technological change is having on the working class as a whole. It is therefore necessary to analyse the nature of technological change to establish if it abides by laws of development and certain discernible patterns, and to see how these patterns affect white-collar workers and the whole nature of social and productive organisation.
Technological change is a powerful force which has moulded the course of history from earliest times, not merely in the sense that it tends to raise the standard of living of all or sections of the community but also in a much more profound political sense in that technological change alters the whole character of society.
It was the invention of agriculture and subsequent flow of inventions such as metallurgy and the use of wheeled transport which transformed the simple life of primitive Communism into civilisation with its complexities and class distinctions.
"Democracy" of iron
About 3,000 B.C. a discernible change was taking place in the structure of society. The communities of equal farmers were gradually replaced by states in which the vast majority lived at subsistence level, while all the surplus products of their labours were used for a small class of kings, noblemen and priests. Class division became the basis of social structure. That age obtained its name from the metal used to provide implements at that stage—Bronze. However, due to its rarity and costliness, bronze never greatly extended man's control over nature. Its rarity also ensured that it was only available to the prosperous class.
When man learned to produce iron as well as bronze, the then society was profoundly affected by this technical advance. At this stage, metal tools became generally available to the farmer and enormously increased the productivity of agriculture. From 700 B.C., iron axes made possible the clearance of great forests and hence a further expansion of agriculture. The increased productivity of agriculture yielded a surplus which could then support a large number of craftsmen. The commodities produced by the craftsmen became more generally available, and were no longer merely produced for the wealthy. The craftsmen provided the farmer directly with tools in order to increase the productivity of his work. There then existed for the first time a balance relationship between industry and agriculture.
This changed relationship ended a stage in which agriculture provided good for the craftsmen, but the craftsman's product went to the select few. The craftsmen, by using iron, were able to provide themselves with ever improved tools, thereby increasing the productivity of their crafts which in turn tended to enhance their economic status. Thus the advance in technology from the production of bronze to that of iron tended to break down barriers between classes which had brought about a stagnation in the Bronze Age.
Power Driven Machinery
It can therefore be demonstrated that even from earliest times technological change has had a profound effect upon the structure of society. The more "democratic" Iron Age societies created circumstances in which technical advance could be made. This progress was however limited by the fact that although slavery created the conditions for the accumulation of wealth into fewer hands and therefore laid the basis for a further development of the productive forces; yet, in its decline it was responsible for holding back the full development of techniques such as animal power and the water wheel. Thus technological change necessitated a social change in which slave states had to be replaced by mediaeval feudalism. This structure of society provided a higher status for the master craftsman, and thereby stimulated a wealth of technical innovations including the first development of power-driven machinery.
By the end of the Middle Ages, the scale and nature of machinery had become too large for the social organisation which had created it. Thus the master craftsmen and their powerful Guilds which had introduced the machinery then became an impediment to future progress. The further development of the productive forces could only be brought about by the newly arising capitalist class.
Thus it will be seen that technological change has a profound effect upon the social organisation at any given time. It is desirable at this stage to attempt to quantify the rate of technological change. The scale of development in the last 20 years is probably equal to that accomplished in the whole of man's existence. The scale of scientific effort, which is closely allied to technological change, in the present century has increased out of all recognition. It has been asserted by Professor J. D. Bernal that in 1896 there were perhaps in the world some 50,000 people who between them carried on the whole tradition of science, not more than 15,000 of whom were responsible for the advancement of knowledge through research. Today the total number of scientific workers in industry, government and academic circles must be in the order of 3 million.
Thus the rate of change must be at least exponential and we shall attempt to see how such a rapid rate of change interacts on social organisations and the sort of stresses it gives rise to. To do this we shall merely examine technological change over the last 100 years and attempt to identify the changing role of the white-collar worker during that period. A useful basis from which to do this is to consider the organisation of a typical factory over that period. A factory 100 years ago would have been owned and managed by the same person. This owner-manager would be responsible in all but the most trivial detail for the complete running of the factory. He would determine the tempo at which people worked, the purchasing of materials, the design or nature of the product, and the actual price at which the product was sold.
Let us firstly consider the type of equipment he would have had as a means of production. He could rest assured in those days that if he bought a piece of machinery it would last for his lifetime, and even be an asset which he could pass on to his son. In the 1930s, however, the life of equipment was reduced to something like 25 years; in the '50s it was about 10 years, and now capital intensive equipment is obsolete in about 4 or 5 years. We can therefore say that it is an objective law that the rate of obsolescence of equipment is increasing.
The second thing is that the actual cost of the means of production for any commodity, as distinct from the price of the commodity, continues to rise. If again we use our analogy of the factory 100 years ago, the most complicated lathes one could get would cost about the equivalent of 10 men's wages for a year. Today, however, the most complicated lathe with its complete environment of NC (Numerical Control) tape material is something like the equivalent of 100 men's wages per year. The capitalist of today is therefore confronted with machinery which is becoming obsolete by the minute and is involving him in enormous capital investment. The effect of this is that he will seek to exploit this equipment for 24 hours a day, and in doing so will seek to ensure that the entire workforce which interfaces with this equipment will also work 24 hours a day. He will seek in the process to introduce shift working and eliminate so-called "non-productive" time. Since this kind of equipment greatly changes the organic composition of capital we find that the greater "effort" in the productive process is made by the machine than by the operator. Hence employers will seek to ensure that the rate at which the machinery is utilised is set by somebody other than the operator himself. Therefore we will find more and more that freer workers of all kinds will be put under pressure to move away from payment by results and begin to accept measured day work.
More and more white-collar workers are now finding that high capital equipment is being used in their work environment. Typical examples are the use of computerised systems. Many of these, particularly in the design environment, are directly synchronised with high capital equipment on the shop floor. These systems are used, for example, for the preparation of NC tapes for NC control machines, such as jig bores or lathes on the shop floor. Employers are therefore attempting to ensure that this high capital equipment is exploited for 24 hours a day for the reasons already given.
My own union is finding, for example, increasing pressure on a whole range of our members to work on shift. The effect these developments are having on white-collar workers is quite dramatic. Previously these workers, including graduates, really believed that they were not members of the working class at all, and that trade union organisations were entirely appropriate for the shop floor, and none of their concern.
They are now being compelled to work shift, and accept work measurement as shop floor workers have had to for many years. They are also driven to accept the same organisational forms of resistance to these trends as the shop floor workers have done.
Shift working is having a profound effect upon the social life of white-collar workers. I know of a suburban estate composed almost entirely of extremely status-conscious white-collar workers. Their social life is geared to a normal nine to five existence. Some belong to a small theatre group, others to tennis clubs and even a small operatic society. There was some consternation three or four years ago when the council built an estate within this suburban island. Quite apart from the quality of the property and the clothes of the occupants, the council tenants were distinguishable by the irregular times which they departed for work. Many were engaged in three shift working at a large engineering firm. During the past 18 months, a science based firm where several of the white collar workers are engaged as mathematicians, has installed a computer complex. These are now in turn required to work in shifts, and depart at the same time as those on the council estate. Not only has a further symbol of their status been removed, but they will in addition experience the same social effects of shift working as manual workers have done for some time.
A number of studies demonstrate this. P E Mott et al. 'Shift Work, the Social, Psychological and Physical Consequences,' Ann Arbor, 1965, 'found that day workers get an average of seven and one-half [illegible] than the overall average of rotating shift workers. But when they are working the night segment of their shift, rotating workers average only five and one-half hours of sleep. The biggest problem for rotating shift workers occurs when they move from their turn on the day shift to the night shift.' One study 'report that only 37 per cent of the workers adjust to the new sleeping times immediately, while 28 per cent of the workers said that they took four days or more to adjust to the night shift .... Another study of operators in two different power plants in the United States found that only 31 per cent of the men working under an extended seven-day week rotation reported that they adjusted to their hardest shift change within a day or less. Even fewer, just 5 per cent of the men working a monthly rotation schedule, stated they could adjust to their hardest shift change in one day. Under the latter schedule, 70 per cent reported that their adjustment to the new schedule took a four days or more.'
'A higher proportion of night and rotating shift workers reported that they were fatigued much of the time, that their appetites were dulled, and that they were constipated much of the time.'
'The ulcer rate (among German workers) was eight times as high for the rotating shift workers as for the fixed shift group.'
'The most frequently mentioned difficulties in husband-wife relationships concern the absence of the worker from the home in the evening, sexual relations, and difficulties encountered by the wife in carrying out her household duties'... 'Another area of family life that seems to be adversely affected by certain kinds of shift work is the father-child relationship.'
Factory Control and the White Collar Worker
If we return to our example of a factory 100 years ago, we can trace the manner in which control of the work force has changed. Initially, the owner manager would have exercised a direct control himself. With the increasing complexity of production and a growth of the number of workers involved, he was compelled to delegate responsibility to the subordinates. One of the most obvious examples is the emergence of the foreman—a white collar worker. Gradually, the assessment of earnings was undertaken by other white collar workers (subsequently to develop into work study engineers). Material purchasing and supply and a whole series of ancilliary functions were also undertaken by them. These were in fact organisational functions of the factory owner manager at an earlier historical stage. In consequence, these white collar workers although exploited themselves were also the objective oppressors of the workers on the shop floor. In order to secure their loyalty, the management provided them with "privileges" denied to manual workers. They had sick pay, insurance schemes and paid holidays. They had far greater protection against unemployment arising from minor slumps. Many of them felt a great adherence to the management, and in some instances felt themselves to be part of it. The objective role of some of these workers, for example, that of foremen tended to make them hostile to trade union organisation. Indeed at one stage, because of the role they played, D.A.T.A. refused to have such people in membership. During the last 20 years, technological change has fundamentally altered the role of these people. In many technologically advanced firms, the tempo of work is no longer set by a foreman or a work study engineer, but is determined by the rate of the process itself. Foremen increasingly find themselves supervising technical processes rather than people. In consequence their relationship to the general work force is rapidly changing. During the past four years, we have recruited many foremen, and some of them have demonstrated militancy and class consciousness which would have been regarded as an aberration ten or fifteen years ago.
Economical Consequence of Technological Change
It is worth identifying some of the major consequences of technological change at this stage.
a) Increased cost of the means of production of most commodities.
b) Increased rate of obsolescence of all high capital equipment.
c) Increased research and development costs.
d) Diminishing rates of returns (See Fig. 1)
The effect of the above is that the manipulation of markets (to effect economy of scale), takeovers and rationalisation become the prime function of top management. A moribund stage is reached in which the production of capital becomes more important than production itself. Hence we will see more financiers such as Arnold Weinstock in top industrial positions, and fewer technicians such as Sir Denning Pearson. This will result in a shift of power inside the companies themselves. The white collar superstructure of design engineers, technologists, metallurgists and chemists were all part of the management chain leading quite directly to overall managerial decisions. Such decisions will increasingly be taken by the financiers as control of the company passes into the hands of the market manipulators. The design/engineering hierarchy is now confined to the control of production, and undertakes the role of non managerial skilled workers. With this change is status, has come an alienation from management and a much greater willingness to join trade unions as they recognise their gradual proletarianisation.
Fragmentation of Skills
The fragmentation of skills on the shop floor is well known. A similar process is taking place in white collar areas. The draughtsman of the thirties could design a product, draw it, stress it, select the materials, write the test specification, etc. Each of these is now quite separate specialised function. White collar workers are coming to realise the basic reality that employers see them also as mere units of production!
This directly affects their working conditions, for when an employer deals with units of production his main concern is to cut costs. This has always been obvious in the case of machinery. For example, an employer does not buy a machine with a tape control if he can get away with using a manual one. But this also extends to the environment in which that unit of production is situated. You provide any productive unit with the minimum environment in which it will work. You do not use it in a temperature controlled room if you can get away with putting it in an old shed. You do not provide it with exotic oils or rare and expensive raw materials if it will work with cheaper ones. In other words you provide the unit of production with the minimum capabilities necessary to do the job and you put it in the minimum environment it will work in. These principles are now being applied more and more to white collar workers. People are now provided with the minimum education and intellectual development necessary to enable them to do the job. It is no longer the case that even intellectual white collar workers have had the broad education that they had in the past. Like the man on the shop floor they are to be trained to do a job and not as human beings. All this is becoming very evident in science courses where the sole object now is to turn out a technician who can do his job and not a person who can think of the implications of what is happening.
What is happening to white collar workers can even be looked at in terms of maintenance. Just as you give a machine the minimum maintenance so the working class has always been given the minimum "maintenance" in the form of the National Health Service. If anyone thinks that that is an exagerated analogy just let them remember the statement made by a Doctor at Willesden Hospital that there was no need to resuscitate National Health patients over the age of 65. Just like a machine these people had to perform a particular work cycle, but once that was accomplished they are no longer necessary.
This tendency to produce and train workers for a particular work cycle is becoming increasingly obvious and is beginning to act very brutally against older workers, and in particular against older white collar workers who find it difficult to adapt to the new techniques of computerisation, etc. In most 'rationalisation' schemes whereas in the past white collar workers would have been protected against the full effects, for the historical reasons mentioned earlier, now in many cases it is the white collar workers who are the first to go and in the main it is older white collar workers who are the first of all to be made redundant.
These processes we have just described are of such importance that it is necessary to look at them in some detail. They are going to get increasingly important as the rate of technological change increases. It is in particular important for all younger workers to understand them as unfortunately it is a biological fact that we are all going to get old. Many highly skilled white collar workers now have a specified life span in their particular area of work, and after that their experience what American Sociologists now term "Career de-escalation." They say, for example, that a mathematician has given of his best in about 10 years and that you have soaked him of his most fruitful ideas by the age of 35 and thereafter you should 'de-escalate' him down the hierarchy and get some up and coming young technologist to take his place. This position has not of course yet been reached for the mass of white collar workers, but the trend is present. The concept of designing a life span for people is already quite open and brutal for manual workers. For example, at Standard Triumph of Coventry they calculate that they have burned up a man on the main production line after only 10 years. They even tried to get the AEF to agree that these 10 years should start not later than 30 so that they can get young healthy workers to slave at a terrific pace for 10 years.
Increasing Specialisation and the Dominance of the Machine
Just as the work done by all units of production is becoming more and more specialised so too is the work of the white collar workers. Furthermore they are beginning to be appendages to machines. For example, a clerical worker will no longer be responsible for the entire control of wages and all the conditions relating to wages, but becomes just a computer specialist in the preparation of piece work rates and so on. White collar workers now find that at an increasingly early stage they are pigeon holed into a particular kind of job from which it is extremely difficult to change. Any training they receive will be geared to that particular job and to nothing else. This is perfectly obvious if you look at the time-table of studies of people on day release.
One subject that has been discussed a great deal is the effect this is having on embryonic white collar workers such as students. Here the pattern is more complicated than some people would like to believe. It is certainly the case that firms such as ICI see all graduates as potential industrial fodder, but there is a very big difference in the roles which different types of students play once they have entered industry. The 'revolt' of students seems to be strongest amongst social science students. Yet it is these students who, when they leave university, will be amongst the worst and most direct oppressors of the working class. They will go into general management or, even worse, the personnel departments. Some will even become what one West London firm now refers to as "Pacification Experts." These type of people see men who have had nervous breakdowns (as a result of the frantic tempo of work) and try to convince them that what the real trouble is their relation with their wives, etc. On the other hand it is the engineering students, who are most backward at college who actually enter into the most proletarianised white collar occupations. In this new context it is they, and not the ex-social science students, who are most likely to join trade unions and stand up to the boss.
Other layers of students fall between these two extremes both in terms of their proletarianisation and in terms of their reaction to it. Consider, for example, the case of teachers. These are not directly concerned in relations at the work place, but their status and style of work has changed remarkably. At one time to become a teacher was a relatively well paid and reasonable way for bright young people to escape from the working class. Now, however, no graduate leaving university would think about becoming a teacher simply from the point of view of money or status. If he or she does decide to become a teacher then either they have to accept gentile poverty or they have, like other workers, to stand up and fight. This second alternative brings them into contradiction with the whole concept that because you have a degree you have an assured status, have earned the right to a decent living standard.
This tendency towards proletarianisation will also be helped by the increasing mechanisation that is occurring in teaching with the introduction of language laboratories and such like. In addition modern developments such as computer graphics will take away much of the mystique of certain fields of teaching. This technique means that the most complex mathematical functions can be displayed visually and thus be made more readily comprehensible. This leaves far less opportunity for the rigmarole and special airs which teachers of these subjects previously used to adopt for no other reason than to enhance their own status.
With the introduction of these new teaching methods exactly the same process will occur as we have already discussed concerning the introduction of highly capital intensive equipment into industry. I can't see local councils with the attitude that they have towards education, setting up big science laboratories or language laboratories and then only seeing them used from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Teachers will then be confronted with the problem of shift working either for the purposes of adult education, or, as they are already talking about, in order to introduce shift systems into secondary schools.
These processes are as yet only trends amongst many white collar workers, for some, however, they are everyday facts of life. These has been carried to extreme lengths in, for example, the case of design workers. They are now performing many functions which in the past were performed by manual workers. In the past a designer drew something which he then gave to a manual worker, a very highly skilled one, who would transform the drawing into the physical commodity. What is now happening is that with tape controlled machines on the shop floor white collar workers in preparing the tapes are destroying some of the most highly skilled shop floor jobs and instead the machine setting function is being carried out by white collar workers. In companies like Ferranti's you now have a situation where all the Jig Borers have been eliminated and have been replaced by a combination of semi-skilled workers on the shop floor and white collar workers in the offices. The effect on the white collar workers is that the employer now presses them as hard as he pressed the skilled manual workers. This has greatly increased the work load on the white collar workers, and transformed the situation whereby if our members have a work to rule the employer could hardly tell for several weeks. Now they aim to press as much as possible out of each worker and they soon know if we are having a work to rule, a [illegible] or any other form of action.
In their desire to squeeze all possible effort out of this type of white collar workers, managements are desperately trying to find ways of assessing their effort and increasing it. This is particularly the case with for example designers, where in the past it has been difficult to tell if he was really working or not. Now firms aim to control the environment in which such people work so as to remove any such latitude. In the case of a designer for example, the United States Department of Labour reckoned that previously a designer would only spend 5% of his time actually taking design decisions. The rest of his time was spent on routine referencing, talking to other people about how he should deal with a problem and going to libraries to consult standard works. With the introduction of computer graphics however, you can eliminate all the reference work and by so doing increase the decision making rate of the worker by 1900%. The strain this puts on the worker is quite enormous. This applies even down to little things such as going to the library to consult a reference. This has often seemed to me a very human thing to do giving an opportunity to chat to mates, get away from the direct atmosphere of the work place, and so on. I think that we need this type of civilization in industry and in fact with the present tempo of work it is almost a therapeutic necessity. But firms have now virtually succeeded in eliminating this. You now work interractively with the computer and in some jobs, such as optimising wing configuration, you can now do a job in 5.8 minutes which took 6 months by traditional methods of work.
In fields such as design mathematics the changes have been even more marked. The integration of the man into the machine system and his domination by the machine has here become total. Firms now see the man as a component of a man machine system and interface him with a computer which constitutes the machine component. A man in a mathematical sense is, of course, completely unreliable, totally inconsistent, but highly creative. When you interface the two you therefore get an extremely volatile relationship which completely revolutionises the workers conditions of work. For example, the set of calculations that were carried out for the space frame of Expo 67 took 2 hours of a graduates time to do and it is reckoned that to do the same calculations by traditional means would have taken 30,000 years. The machinery to do this is of course extremely expensive and this means that as far as the management is concerned it can no longer have its white collar workers free to walk about the factory with drawings under their arms chatting to their mates, etc. Instead, these highly trained personnel will be tied down to their machine just like a manual worker. In addition, they are compelled to respond to that machine in a way that a worker does on the shop floor, and the very tempo at which they work is determined by the machine.
The Theoretical Explanation
It is necessary to relate the situation which has been described to classical Marxist theory. Although almost all white collar workers would recognise the changes and trends which I have described, of course, relatively few of them know that Marx was able to predict that these trends were inevitable unless the ownership of the means of production was not transferred into the hands of those who actually produce the goods themselves.
The process of fragmentation of skills and reduction of all work to a common denominator was of course foreseen by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto when they wrote that "The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers and "Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently all charm for the workman, he becomes an appendage to the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him," This process is now occurring more and more to white collar workers.
Other contradictions produced by capitalism are also becoming apparent in the case of white collar workers. More and more of these workers are beginning to have to work 3 shifts at a time when in Britain we are beginning to have a pool of unemployed technologically displaced persons. This is going to become worse because the present situation is not just a minor slump with everyone getting a job again after a short period of time. We are approaching a situation like that of the United States where there is a permanant pool of unemployed labour. This idea was reintroduced by the Social Democrats in Wilson's famous double negative when he began to talk about "a not unacceptable level of unemployment." Again this process was foreseen by Engels' when he said in Socialism Scientific and Utopian that "thus it comes about that the economising of the instruments of labour become at the same time from the onset the most reckless waste of labour power and robbery based upon normal conditions under which labour functions, that machinery the most powerful instrument for shortening labour time becomes the most unfailing means of placing every moment of the labourer's time and that of his family at the disposal of capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital."
This remark of Engles also relates to what I have said about the disruption of family life through shift work, the reorganisation of family life in order to fit in whith the needs of the capitalist mode of production and so on.
I had pointed out that the introduction of tape control machines was eliminating completely skilled jobs on the shop floor. It is also eliminating jobs in the design area. Marx also saw this tendency when he said "Modern industry never looks upon or treats the existing forms of a productive process as final, the technical bases of industry is therefore revolutionary while all other modes of production were essentially conservative, by means of machinery, chemical processes [illegible] other methods it leads to a continual change not only in the technical basis of production but also in the function of the labourer and the social combination of the labour process. At the same time therefore it revolutionises the division of labour within society and incessantly transfers masses of capital and people from one branch of production to the other, large scale industry by its very nature therefore necessitates changes in work, variability of function, universal mobility of the labour, and on the other hand, in its capitalistic form it reproduces the old division of labour, with its ossified peculiarities, we have seen how this unsurmountable contradiction robs the worker situation of all peace, of all permanency, and all security, how constantly threatened by taking away the instruments of labour to snatch from his hands his very means of subsistence, and by supressing his particular subdivided task to make it superfluous," and that is precisely what is happening to a whole series of jobs at the moment.
I also tried to show that because a white collar worker is seen by a capitalist simply as part of the means of production, he will, just like manual workers, be supplied with the minimum brain, the minimum maintenance, the minimum food and the minimum clothes consistent with his satisfactory performance as part of the means of production. Again Marx spelt this out absolutely clearly. He said, "Political economy conceives the enstrangement inherent in the nature of labour by not considering the direct relationship between the worker and production, it is true that the labour process produces for the rich wonderful things, but for the worker it produces privation, it produces palaces but for the worker hovels, it produces beauty but for the worker deformanity, it replaces labour by machines, and it throws a section of the workers back to a barbarous type of labour and turns the other workers into machines, it produces intelligence, but for the worker it produces stupidity and cretinism" and he then went on to talk about the capitalist reducing the workers needs to the barest and most miserable levels of physical subsistence. By reducing his activity [illegible] the most abstract mechanical movement, he says "man has neither need of activity or enjoyment." So in fact, the predictions that Marx made in respect of these trends were absolutely correct.
The subjugation of the worker to the machine which he himself created was also clearly foreseen by Marx when he wrote that the worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces for the more his production increases in power and size, the more the worker becomes an even poorer commodity and that the increase in the value of things produced by men is in direct proportion to devaluation of the world of men. In this situation the products of his labour face the worker as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. This whole process of increasing alienation as it is now affecting white collar workers is going to produce a most volatile situation if unions and the revolutionary movement are prepared to understand it theoretically and to articulate this situation.
The Positive Aspects of Technological Change
So far mainly the negative aspects of technological change have been dealt with. This was necessary in order to demonstrate the effect it is having upon white collar workers, the manner in which it is proletarianising them etc. But any such process of change will always proceed dialectically and other aspects must be considered. The major contradiction form the employer is that the more capital he accumulates in any one point, the more vulnerable he becomes to economic action. This is rather the same situation as Mao-Tse-Tung has discussed in his military writings and is analogous to the situation in Vietnam where with the Vietcong with thirty shilling shell can destroy an aircraft costing something like 2 1/2 million. Through capital concentration in industry we now have a situation where twelve workers in a foundry can bring the entire motor industry to a halt. (And good luck to them they should do it more often and more vigorously.)
In the case of white collar workers a new strike power is becoming available to them. When a white collar worker goes on strike it is no longer the case that all he does is lay down his pencil and rubber. Now when such workers go on strike they are immobilising whole computerised installations. Clerical workers going on strike, for example, can disrupt the whole wages structure of a factory. This occurred recently at GEC in Coventry where a strike by clerical workers put nine thousand people out of work in a very short period of time indeed.
This increase in strike power caused by concentration of capital is something which must be taken into account in drawing up strike tactics and in selecting the people who will play a Vanguard role in any factory struggle.
We should recognise the contradictions these concentrations of capital create for the employer and use them against him. He will need docile, pliant workers to exploit his capital investment without disruption (The industrial relations bill is part of the effort to do this. However, the very processes which compel him to turn white collar workers into docile units of production, simultaneously opens up new possibilities for working class action and the creation of new allies for the working class. The utilisation of these opportunities will be one of the most important factors bringing about the creation of a revolutionary situation in Britain.
I believe that the three basic demands which the working class must fight on are:-
1) Wage increases without productivity strings.
2) No anti trade union legislation
3) The right to work.
White collar workers will increasingly see the relevance of all these demands. By utilising the opportunities being created, and with proper leadership we can show people like Weinstock, Paul Chambers and the rest, that they are all absolutely helpless. Although they may have all the paper money in the world they can't eat it, they can't drive around in it and they can't live in it. It is still a fact that without the people who produce the real wealth, the working class, their money is all worthless, whereas if we succed in destroying them, not only would we be able to continue without them, but in fact we would be freer. We would be able to do all the things which we do now, and an increasing range of things that technology would make possible, but in an evironment in which we could begin to control the products of our own labour. This is the kind of perspective we should seek to advance to white collar workers just as much as to any other workers.
To assert that white-collar workers will be pressed to accept shift work and work measurement (including stop watch techniques) is no longer a matter of prediction. It is happening here and now. Last year DATA was involved in a confrontation with Rolls Royce. Some of the conditions the company sought to impose were shift working to exploit high capital equipment and the setting of synthetic times for specific functions and then comparison with "actual performance".
The Union was able to resist this as part of a dispute which cost some £250,000. The real significance is that 10 years ago a white collar worker would never have believed that a company would seek to 'proletarianise' him in this manner.