At the beginning of the 20th century, the notions of work, employment, and wage-earning became fully structured as a status in their own right.
This was achieved in the 19th century with the advent of factories and manufacturing plants, the organization of work into sectors, and the authorization of trade unions.
Before this, work was done on an ad hoc or seasonal basis. It was carried out by paupers who had lost their right to the land or who had been unable to attain the status of master craftsman.
Wage labor thus resembles the labor of newly freed slaves. Although considered free, they remained in the same state of poverty. The difference, perhaps, is that they now have to pay for their housing.
As a result, labor became increasingly organized under the status of salaried workers, gradually acquiring rights. In France, for example, the right to strike was granted in 1864.
In the United States, things did not progress in the same way. But that didn't stop certain corporations from asserting their demands with strength and determination.
For this reason, Frederick Winslow Taylor devised a scientific organization of work that stripped workers of their expertise, turning them into replaceable links in a production chain.
This division of labor was nothing new. It was already the basis for the economic model envisaged by Adam Smith in "Investigations into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776). It also appears in Charles Babbage's "On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures" (1832) and in "De la division du travail social" (1893) written by Émile Durkheim, considered one of the founders of modern sociology. But never to the level of stultification proposed by Taylorism.
Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911, which was translated into French the following year.
This vision of work organization was a source of inspiration for Henri Fayol, pioneer of business management and precursor of management in France.
We are in an era of extreme rationality in work. Workers must be prevented from thinking because the more they think, the more likely they are to make mistakes. We had to mechanize, automate, "proceduralize".
Taylor emphasizes the moral of his method by saying that it allows everyone to work, even the least educated. Everyone has a chance if they apply themselves to their work. This is the hypocrisy of meritocracy.
We don't talk much about Mary Parker Follet, but she had an innovative work organization and management approach.
Her vision of management runs counter to the ideas of Taylor and Fayol. She wanted managers to be socially and humanely involved with their teams. She wanted a fair and balanced relationship between the company and its employees. It is at the origin of the concept of shared leadership. A leader who is an integral part of the team and, as such, has the same duties and obligations.
In 1918, she published "The New State, group organization, the solution of popular government". It's a pity that books on leadership and motivation don't mention it more.
However, much more is said about George Elton Mayo and his famous Hawthorne experiment, which led to his human relations theory.
Apart from the fact that the experiment was carried out on a very small number of participants (10 workers maximum for the team tested in just two experiments), and that the results are highly inconclusive, it has become notable that the observation of a group affects that same group. Mayo was right but for all the wrong reasons.[1]
Elton Mayo's conclusions are questionable in terms of method. And we'll see that he's not the only one. Nevertheless, his conclusion is valid. For the first time, we hear a voice dissonant to that of Taylorism, mechanical labor, and the dumbing-down of the masses. It's a voice that Mary Parker Follet couldn't carry.
But not everyone is lucky enough to teach at Harvard.
From 1939 onwards, Kurt Lewin was interested in group dynamics. Also, a Harvard professor and representative of the school of human relations that grew out of Elton Mayo's work, he emphasized the effects of influences on choices and decisions within a cooperative group.
He experimented with working in autonomous teams to which objectives were assigned but which were free to organize. These teams would produce 20% more than teams working under Taylorian conditions.
In the '50s, Chris Argyris, who had followed Lewin's courses at Harvard, took a closer look at performance factors. He concluded from his experiences that developing individual skills was the key to success. He emphasized hierarchical trust's importance and informed employees about the company's economic stakes.
In the '60s, Rensis Likert defined a four-level authoritarian versus participative management scale.
This scale was adapted by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton in 1964 into a two-dimensional managerial grid:
This grid proposes a leadership style they call democratic leadership.
But the word "democratic" is problematic. A company is not a democracy if it responds to the demands of the few. It's much more likely to be called a "democrature".
No matter what word is used, this will be the beginning of an evolution in managerial language that continues to be popular: intuitive leader, alpha leader, servant leader, happiness manager, etc.
Before her untimely death in 1971, Joan Woodward published "Industrial Organisation: Behaviour and Control". In it, she emphasized that the "one best way," as promoted by Taylor, did not exist.
She proposes the theory of structural contingency, which defines a link between the structure of the organization and the technology used by the company. It attempts to show that companies using the same technology have similar structures.
Tom Burns and George Stalker complete this theory by attesting that the most efficient companies have been able to adapt rapidly to the constraints of their environment, thus ensuring their survival.
During the 30 glorious years from 1945 to 1975, wage conditions were highly codified. And even though economic growth was remarkable in France, wage inequalities increased significantly.
One of the main demands of '68 was an increase in the minimum wage to help reduce these inequalities.
In the '60s, women demanded an end to the gendered division of labor. This division, which has always existed, naturalizes skills. This meant that certain activities were reserved for women and others for men. For women in factories, it's mainly repetitive, mind-numbing activities allocated to them. Moreover, this discrimination meant a significant difference in pay between women and men for the same activity, considering that for a woman, work was a secondary occupation to her main job: running the household.
The events of May 68 were also an opportunity for women to emancipate themselves from their work: "equal pay for equal work", even if we know that this gendered division of work and pay is still with us today.
"We Want Sex Equality" is a documentary released in 2010 about the 1968 strike by female workers at Ford's Dagenham car plant near London and the negotiations that led to its leaders achieving complete wage equality between men and women.
In 1966, near Liège in Belgium, a strike led by women workers at FN Herstal demanded equal pay for men. The strike lasted twelve weeks and had a considerable impact on the issue of equal pay and on the evolution of women's place in Belgian society.
Fanny Gallot insists that professional equality is at stake more than equal pay. Women must have the same access to managerial positions as men.
The '80s sounded the death knell of the 30 glorious years. The neo-liberalism imposed by Reagan and Thatcher, under the influence of Friedrich Hayek's ideas and championed by his biggest fan, Milton Friedman, removed most state aid and left the door open to all possible financial adventures. This neo-liberalism, skilfully presented in "The Wolf of Wall Street", led to the 2008 subprime crisis.
But who is the society? There's no such thing! There are men and women and families, and no government can do anything except through people. But people look after themselves first (...) People think too much about their rights without thinking about their obligations. But you can't have a right unless someone else has fulfilled an obligation. I think one of the tragedies of our times is that some people manipulate the system of benefits we pay - benefits that were imagined to reassure people that if they were ill, a safety net would be in place to help them - and (...) say to themselves: "But what's the point of working? I earn just as much on the dole! But this "unemployment" is paid for by your neighbor. - Margaret Thatcher (1987)[2]
In France, this entrepreneurial spirit was forged under the leadership of Bernard Tapie, who was so cynical as to run as a socialist under the presidency of François Mitterrand.
It was the beginning of the valorization of the worker as a hero, as an invincible conqueror. You have to push yourself further and higher.
This is the autobiographical story told by Chris Gardner in "The Pursuit of Happyness", released in 2006.
The same atmosphere can be found in films and cartoons promoting superpowers and solitary heroism.
But assembly-line work still exists. For some, it should be done away with by outsourcing to Asia. For others, we must give it allure and color through atmospheric effects and beautiful costumes.
[1] Is there a Hawthorne effect? By François GEOFFROY http://annales.org/gc/2019/gc135/2019-03-4.pdf