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"Tremendous energy goes into coercing work from those
at the bottom and competing for advancement at the top."
Accordingly, in proportion
as work is broad or narrow,
stimulating or monotonous, it
develops or stunts one's abilities.
Moreover, since individuals develop their personalities and consciousness through the way they relate
to productive activity, work is
a basis for the formation of consciousness
along class lines. -Sam
Bowles and Herb Gintis, Schooling
In Capitalist America
"What wouldn't be possible is for workers to have only one
extreme type of work, whether
rote, aesthetic, responsible,
or subordinate."
"We are not claiming everyone will want to learn everything,
or be equally good at everything, or that all who perform a task will
be equally good at it. We only claim that people can perform and enjoy
a variety of tasks, and certainly many more than current arrangements
permit. "
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Airport Council Structure
Ignoring, for the sake of discussion, the probability
of major changes in air transport owing to technological advances and
ecological constraints, we next consider an airport.
Obviously an airport involves flying, air -traffic
control, fueling, procuring and storing fuel, and repairing and maintaining
aircraft, as well as keeping track of and ordering new equipment. In
addition, there is providing service on the planes, procuring and preparing
food for flights, handling baggage, making seating assignments, providing
ground transportation, caring for the premises, and serving food and
providing magazines, candy, and gum at terminals. Other necessary tasks
include scheduling work assignments, preparing timetables for flights,
and assessing demand.
A Capitalist Airport
How should
all this be organized? A capitalist airport (each of whose units are
to make maximum profit) will fragment tasks into roles that give a minimum
number of people authority. Pilots fly. Air -traffic controllers
control traffic. Cooks cook. Baggage handlers handle baggage. Custodians
clean. Food servers serve. Each job fosters
different skills and imparts different rewards. tremendous
energy goes into coercing work from those at the bottom and competing
for advancement at the top.
At a large
capitalist airport, a huge number of individuals have marginal assignments
that diminish solidarity with most of their coworkers and provide threadbare
income and little fulfillment. A smaller number of pilots, administrators,
and managers do interesting work but feel ambivalent about having to
adapt themselves in elitist ways owing to the power they necessarily
exert over their less exalted airport coworkers.
A Participatory Airport
At Jesse
Owens Airport - organized according to the principles of participatory
economics - all workers participate intellectually, emotionally,
and physically. This doesn't mean they all fly, cook, traffic -control,
and organize schedules. As normal folks they have normal capacities,
though these are well -developed because they have been schooled
in a humane society. So, how do they achieve their goals? Of the many
ways workers at Jesse Owens Airport could organize tasks into job complexes
to insure a diversified and fulfilling work situation for all personnel,
we summarize one.
First,
an airport -wide council represents all workers at Jesse Owens airport.
This global council in turn incorporates airplane task councils, ground
task councils, and coordinating task councils. Each employee does either
airplane or ground work and some coordinating work. There are also work
-group councils for baggage handlers, restaurant workers, etc.
Airplane
jobs include flying, navigating, and serving patrons. Ground jobs include
procuring and storing fuel, maintaining and repairing airport vehicles
and equipment, handling baggage, making seat assignments, providing
food in the terminals, maintaining shops and airport grounds, air traffic
control, and providing ground transport. Lastly, coordinating tasks
include ordering supplies, scheduling flights, planning and maintaining
and overseeing operations and timetables.
Each Jesse
Owens employee has a work complex that includes some coordinating and
some plane or ground work. Assignments are in accord with the individual's
tastes and skills and the general requirement that work complexes balance
quality of work life. Not everyone is a pilot. Nor is everyone an air
-traffic controller or personnel coordinator. However, more people
do these types of work, for fewer hours, than in a capitalist airport.
Those who pilot part of the week also serve patrons or handle baggage
and do some coordinating work in a combination that gives them rewards
and empowerment roughly comparable to people who don't pilot the plane
but cook on it or fuel it.
On a particular
flight someone will be in charge of services and someone else will be
head pilot, and, if a team handles baggage, one member may be in charge.
But a few individuals do not always have authority, while others are
always subordinate. The mythology that fixed hierarchies are the only
efficient way to organize work disappears as job complexes balanced
for participation and equity prove otherwise.
Obviously,
it pays to diversify rote tasks. Training for these takes little time
and benefits accruing from increased diversity and equity are substantial.
For more complex work, like being a gourmet cook, a pilot, or an air
-traffic controller, those trained would have to use their skills
often enough to avoid the inefficiencies of investing heavily in training
folks who do not put their training to sufficient use. However, even
in these cases the notion that people should work exclusively at one
task is an exaggeration.
Whereas
at a capitalist airport an air -traffic controller would work a
fiftyand sometimes a sixty -hour week and develop tesion -related
ailments, at Jesse Owens she would do air traffic work for only twenty
hours and spend the rest of her time doing low tension tasks during
which she could interact pleasantly with coworkers. While a flight attendant
on a capitalist plane must always cater to passengers in a solicitous,
menial way regardless of their behavior, at Jesse Owens he might have
piloted an earlier flight, and then worked handling baggage and in the
finance/planning office for the rest of the week. Moreover, when attending
to the needs of passengers he would not be motivated by a desire to
avoid being fired or to upstage fellow workers, but by a desire to provide
a pleasant trip, good service, and quality work as a member of a team
producing a worthy product. This would never require being servile.
All work would be "humanized" as people's motives emphasize
working for one's peers. Indeed, this typifies the change from a class
-structured (and race - and gender -stratified) workplace
in which motives develop in light of conflicts with one's coworkers
and the desire to avoid getting screwed, to a self -managed workplace
where one respects one's coworkers and enjoys the solidarity and pleasure
of diverse work providing a socially useful product.
Some workers
might have a work complex with especially rewarding and empowering tasks
offset by turns at debilitating, boring tasks. Others might have more
uniform complexes without work of either extreme, What wouldn't be possible
is for workers to have only one extreme type of work, whether rote,
aesthetic, responsible, or subordinate. If piloting were a desirable
assignment and cleaning the insides of airplanes or toilets was not,
we would often find that those who do one do some of the other as well.
Is this a waste of talent and training? Could we get more hours of flying
per hours of pilot training by having pilots only fly? Yes. But could
we get a higher quality experience for airport workers and higher quality
service for passengers by the more elite system of organization? No.
Jesse Owens
airport would not lack means of supervision, coordination, and work
evaluation. Personnel workers would evaluate and mediate. Team leaders
would coordinate and supervise. councils would evaluate complaints,
determine schedules, set job complexes, refine work loads, and collectively
organize the global airport production plan. The point isn't that under
participatory economics, all need for delegation of authority, evaluation,
and coordination would disappear. That's ridiculous. The claim is only
that such tasks, like all others, can be accomplished in ways that do
not establish fixed hierarchies or otherwise allocate work inequitably.
If baggage handling requires a team leader, fine, but it needn't be
the same person every day. And, in any event, the team leader will handle
bags like everyone else.
Airport
workers will be well educated and capable of harmonious, socially rich
interactions in a context where these are promoted and rewarded. We
are not claiming everyone will want to learn everything, or be equally
good at everything, or that all who perform a task will be equally good
at it. We only claim that people can perform and enjoy a variety of
tasks, and certainly many more than current arrangements permit.
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