Making and Selling Cars: Innovation and Change in the U.S. Automotive Industry

5. From Deskilling the Work Force . . .

✺ A line of expensive Potter & Johnson machines stood idle at the Ford Motor Company’s Piquette Street assembly plant on Easter Monday, 1908, because no skilled mechanics were on duty to operate them. Also unstaffed were half of the plant’s line of lathes on which camshafts were turned. Manpower shortages on these two lines were slowing the entire plant’s production. Production chief Charles Sorensen discussed the problem with Henry Ford: Sorensen: “We are in real trouble, Mr. Ford.” Ford: “Well, that is an easy thing to fix.” Sorensen: “Easy to fix! Just how would you fix it?” Ford: “Why, go ahead and make some skilled men for the jobs. Go to the gate and take in unskilled men and train them.”1 The Ford Motor Company had only nine employees when it was founded in 1903. Six of the nine made and fitted the parts—pattern maker Dick Kettlewell, draftsman August Degener, blacksmith Fred W. Seeman, and three skilled mechanics (Walter Gould, Harry Love, and John Wandersee ). James Couzens was office manager, in charge of business affairs, bookkeeping, billing, collections, correspondence, and sales. C. Harold Wills, a mechanical engineer and draftsman, was the principal shop assistant , who carried out most of the detailed engineering work, such as preparing blueprints; among his many contributions, Wills designed the distinctive script logo that the company has always used. Henry Ford himself was vice president in charge of engineering and production.2 In 1903 all nine of Ford’s employees were skilled craftsmen. By 1910 only one-third of the Ford workers were skilled, and by 1917, one-fifth. According to a Ford employee, speaking in 1926, “Workmen who have been 119 The average worker . . . wants a job in which he does not have to think. —Henry Ford 5 From Deskilling the Work Force . . . in the Ford plant, seeking jobs in another plant, when asked what their work was, will for example say, ‘My work was to put on bolt No. 46.’ Often it would take only 15 or 20 minutes to learn how to perform his little job efficiently .”3 Fordist production required the attraction and retention of a large supply of laborers who were minimally skilled and remained so, yet who were capable of being fashioned into highly productive workers. Automotive manufacturing was a skilled operation in 1900, and workers controlled the handicraft-based production technology. Technological innovations, such as the moving assembly line, along with scientific management techniques that reorganized and fragmented production tasks into easily learned, performed, and supervised units enabled firms to impose much more rigid control over the work process. The deskilling of the auto industry shattered the early balance of control of the workplace between workers and owners. Responsibility was removed from the skilled hands of craft workers, and a system of simplified, management -controlled mechanical operations was put into place instead. The unilateral , arbitrary imposition of poor working conditions by owners inevitably aroused workers’ anger, culminating at mid-century in a bargain that stabilized a rough balance of power between the two warring sides. In exchange for working hard in routinized jobs, employees were rewarded with high levels of material comfort and security, protected by a strong union. A century after it swept away the craft system, Fordist production was dismantled, replaced by flexible or lean production. As in the early twentieth century, in more recent years change in the organization of the workplace—introduced by management—provoked angry responses from workers. Employees saw that management was breaking the old deal, while the managers maintained that the survival of the firm was at risk. It took several decades for labor and management to work out a deal for peaceful coexistence under Fordist production, and it may take as long to sort out relationships under flexible production. Working Conditions in the Early Years of the Auto Industry Early craft production used a work force that was highly skilled in design, machine operations, and fittings. Most workers progressed through an apprenticeship to a full set of craft skills. Many could hope to run their own machine shops, becoming self-employed contractors to assembly firms.4 Southeastern Michigan became the center of auto production in part Making Motor Vehicles ✺ 120 From Deskilling the Work Force . . . because skilled workers were concentrated there. Carpenters, woodworkers , painters, and upholsterers worked in the carriage and furniture industries . Pattern makers, molders, and sheet-metal workers came from the stove manufacturing...