Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work

by Jason Resnikoff

Labor's End traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the factory to its wide-ranging implications in political and social life. As Jason Resnikoff shows, the term automation expressed the conviction that industrial progress meant the inevitable abolition of manual labor from industry. But the real substance of the term reflected industry's desire to hide an intensification of human work--and labor's loss of power and protection--behind magnificent machinery and a starry-eyed faith in technological revolution. The rhetorical power of the automation ideology revealed and perpetuated a belief that the idea of freedom was incompatible with the activity of work. From there, political actors ruled out the workplace as a site of politics while some of labor's staunchest allies dismissed sped-up tasks, expanded workloads, and incipient deindustrialization in the name of technological progress. A forceful intellectual history, Labor's End challenges entrenched assumptions about automation's transformation of the American workplace.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Labor

272 pages, Paperback

Published January 18, 2022

Reviews

[ConalPriest · Rating 4 out of 5]

Labour’s End demystifies automation; the promise of release from toil through time-saving automatic systems and processes of work. Resnikoff does this in a number of ways. He defines what we mean by automation, a task that can be difficult when a term becomes usefully amorphous for historians and takes on a life of its own. Resnikoff also discusses automation ideologically and linguistically, charting how it was used and co-opted. The thrust of Resnikoff’s work that will likely be most significant to readers, however, is the examination of the ways in which automation degraded and concentrated work, rather than relieving it. All of this is given an air of unstoppable power as the autonomous freight train crashes through the post-war period. Along the way we pass through much familiar territory that is still feeling the aftershocks of degraded work, such as the decrepit collapsed automobile industry.
The book, in places, reads like a manifesto, but its foundation of research is so clear, and the case so well made, that one doesn’t feel Resnikoff’s professional standards are compromised. The weakness of organised labour, the outsourcing of labour to other parts of the world, and the crowding out of automation from much of the contemporary political landscape all come in for criticism. Indeed, whilst many of the hopes for automation have faded from view, we do not always know from whence this historical fog has rolled. Resnikoff provides many answers to this question. Ultimately, in demonstrating the hand of the employer and the politician in the exploitation of labour through automation, historians can no longer abstract the term into the mechanical at the expense of flesh and blood.

[Zuzu Burford · Rating 3 out of 5]

For all the hype concerning automation in the workplace over the years, it appears that if anything the workers are worse off and the promises were pie in the sky. Amazon is a typical example where assembly lines are controlled by algorithms and unions are not permitted.
This is a sad indictment of free trade, consumerism, and capital flowing upwards and squeezing the worker even more. Profits over the last 60 decades have risen year after year while workers are still struggling to keep their heads above the water.
I had no joy in reading this part of history for it is a standout condemnation of the haves still controlling the have nots as it has been forever. Greed at its most nasty on the pretext that automation was the answer to betterment for all.

[Haley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who hasn't wondered how automation has affected our daily lives? You go into McDonald's nowadays and usually there is not even a cashier anymore. This books explains the beginnings of the automation trend that we can now no longer escape. While it does have it's place it does seem like it is trying to continually push out the average worker.

I got this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.