30: Collaboration and Obstruction
Within the workplace, there exist certain rules of conduct that govern the manner in which people interact, which are ideally derived from the purpose of their collaboration. Individuals must behave in certain ways, and refrain from behaving in other ways, in order to facilitate a specific purpose - to assist one another or at least to avoid obstructing one another. Such rules may be explicit or implicit to the interaction.
Other customs are flagrantly unnecessary and injurious. Babbage gives the example of the way in which many workplaces, it is customary for a new employee to pay a small fine to the rest of the men, or even to offer so small a token as purchasing a round of drinks for his new coworkers. This, allegedly, is to compensate them for the frustration of dealing with a new person in an established working environment as well as the additional effort they must undertake to train and orient him. While such a boon may mitigate the difficulty, it should not be extracted from the workman, and neither should this be the sole incentive for others to orient him.
It is also important for rules to be explicit and agreed upon in advance. In the example of workers who are paid by piece-work, the income of one worker depends on the one before him in the production process, so there is a common arrangement of imposing a fine on those who fail to meet production quotas to compensate the others. While fair in theory, the fine is often unexpected and the amount of the fine is arbitrary in practice. Had it been communicated in sufficient detail, there would be no cause for complaint.
Another custom is mentioned of a master who provides a bonus to workers for various achievements: achieving a given level of production, reducing waste, demonstrating a certain level of skill, and the like. This is likewise a practice that can be beneficial in encouraging behavior, so long as it is communicated clearly in advance and consistently awarded.
Likewise, it is common in factories that pay for piece-work to refuse to pay for work that is not adequate in its quality. But too often "quality" is the subjective judgment of the inspector and great discontent is effected when this judgment seems arbitrary, inconsistent, or unfair. Quality standards must therefore be defined in detail and known in advance.
Collaboration among masters or workers can have some benefits, but they are often offset by the damages done by conspiracies that arise. It is useful for masters to collaborate to share and develop a common pool of labor but harmful if they collude to fix wages at an unfairly low level. It is likewise useful for workers to collaborate and engage in group negotiations with their masters, but likewise harmful of they collude to obstruct work or demand unfairly high wages.
Government is often involved when the collusion becomes harmful, particularly when the disagreement between workers and their employers causes harm to others - even if there is no escalation to open violence. When the coal miners strike, any industry that depends on coal is shut down, so people who are not involved in the dispute are harmed. The local market is deprived of the goods that would have been produced as well as the wages that might have been spent on other goods. However, in its desperation to effect a resolution to disputes, government tends to do more harm than good.
(EN: This has gone on for quite a while without a single reference to the topic of this book, which is machinery and automation rather than the politics and organization of the human factors of production. I'm going to begin trimming the fat.)
In terms of automation, the machine substitutes for human factors in a production process, and is subject to the same rules. To make efficient use of a machine, the workers who tend to that machine must be caused to behave in certain ways - and this is often inflexible because the behavior of a machine cannot be changed from its design. At the same time care must be given such that the machine, much like any human worker, is managed in a way to facilitate rather than obstruct, and such that the methods by which it engages with other machines and human workers is most productive and mutually equitable.
The greatest objection of workers to the introduction of machinery is the elimination of human beings in the workplace. Those who are replaced by a machine are naturally displeased, but even those who remain experience dissatisfaction at the loss of their colleagues and the potential threat of their own eventual elimination.
The second objection of workers to machines is, as mentioned, the machines are inflexible and are not accommodating to the humans that interact with them. The workers feel overburdened with the necessity of keeping up with a machine that works too fast, or frustrated by having to slow their pace to that of a machine that works too slowly. It is also worth mentioning that machine can work at a faster rate, for longer hours, and at a constant pace without needing any breaks to recover - and when men work with machines, they are unreasonably expected to match these qualities.
Both of these problems are present even in operations that are run entirely on human labor - and efficient worker replaces several inefficient ones, and others must keep pace. The problems are much more pronounced when machinery is involved, and there is much less tolerance for a machine than for a competent and capable human coworker.
In terms of labor, it is often the demands and complaints of the workers that makes machinery more attractive to masters. A machine works efficiently and constantly and expects no additional compensation for doing so, never complains, and needs no accommodation for its needs save for routine maintenance and repairs.
At the same time, the use of machinery entails certain liabilities in terms of human workers: when a man is unable to work another may take his place, but when a machine breaks down, the production is halted. The men are not content to wait for free, as their constant needs require constant income, and the master must pay for the idle time of his workers caused by the breakdown of his machinery if he means to retain their services once it has been repaired.
He then leaves the topic again to speak of the injustice of paying workers in goods rather than money. It places a burden upon them to trade the goods they take for the things they need, which is time consuming and difficult. This is also detrimental to the sale of the same items in the vicinity, as the manufacturer must compete with every worker who is seeking to unload the same goods and is desperate to do so. There are occasions where this is acceptable to workers, but the manner of pay should be negotiated in advance.