The Workplace Before the Factory
Author: Thomas Max Safley
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9780801480928
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Made in China
Author: Pun Ngai
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2005-04-05
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 0822386755
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs China has evolved into an industrial powerhouse over the past two decades, a new class of workers has developed: the dagongmei, or working girls. The dagongmei are women in their late teens and early twenties who move from rural areas to urban centers to work in factories. Because of state laws dictating that those born in the countryside cannot permanently leave their villages, and familial pressure for young women to marry by their late twenties, the dagongmei are transient labor. They undertake physically exhausting work in urban factories for an average of four or five years before returning home. The young women are not coerced to work in the factories; they know about the twelve-hour shifts and the hardships of industrial labor. Yet they are still eager to leave home. Made in China is a compelling look at the lives of these women, workers caught between the competing demands of global capitalism, the socialist state, and the patriarchal family. Pun Ngai conducted ethnographic work at an electronics factory in southern China’s Guangdong province, in the Shenzhen special economic zone where foreign-owned factories are proliferating. For eight months she slept in the employee dormitories and worked on the shop floor alongside the women whose lives she chronicles. Pun illuminates the workers’ perspectives and experiences, describing the lure of consumer desire and especially the minutiae of factory life. She looks at acts of resistance and transgression in the workplace, positing that the chronic pains—such as backaches and headaches—that many of the women experience are as indicative of resistance to oppressive working conditions as they are of defeat. Pun suggests that a silent social revolution is underway in China and that these young migrant workers are its agents.
The Factory
Author: Hiroko Oyamada
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Published: 2019-10-29
Total Pages: 59
ISBN-13: 081122886X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamada—one of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan The English-language debut of one of Japan's most exciting new writers, The Factory follows three workers at a sprawling industrial factory. Each worker focuses intently on the specific task they've been assigned: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. But their lives slowly become governed by their work—days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving: Where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What's going on with the strange animals here? And after a while—it could be weeks or years—the three workers struggle to answer the most basic question: What am I doing here? With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, The Factory casts a vivid—and sometimes surreal—portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of the modern workplace.
The Excuse Factory
Author: Walter K. Olson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 1997
Total Pages: 394
ISBN-13: 0684827328
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Excuse Factory will spur outrage and spark a national debate about the role of government in the workplace. Olson's expose is certain to shake up the legal industry, rattle government regulators, and cause thousands of workers and managers to nod in vigorous agreement.
American Made
Author: Farah Stockman
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2021-10-12
Total Pages: 433
ISBN-13: 1984801155
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat happens when Americans lose their jobs? In American Made, an illuminating story of ruin and reinvention, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Farah Stockman gives an up-close look at the profound role work plays in our sense of identity and belonging, as she follows three workers whose lives unravel when the factory they have dedicated so much to closes down. “With humor, breathtaking honesty, and a historian’s satellite view, American Made illuminates the fault lines ripping America apart.”—Beth Macy, author of Factory Man and Dopesick Shannon, Wally, and John built their lives around their place of work. Shannon, a white single mother, became the first woman to run the dangerous furnaces at the Rexnord manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was proud of producing one of the world’s top brands of steel bearings. Wally, a black man known for his initiative and kindness, was promoted to chairman of efficiency, one of the most coveted posts on the factory floor, and dreamed of starting his own barbecue business one day. John, a white machine operator, came from a multigenerational union family and clashed with a work environment that was increasingly hostile to organized labor. The Rexnord factory had served as one of the economic engines for the surrounding community. When it closed, hundreds of people lost their jobs. What had life been like for Shannon, Wally, and John, before the plant shut down? And what became of them after the jobs moved to Mexico and Texas? American Made is the story of a community struggling to reinvent itself. It is also a story about race, class, and American values, and how jobs serve as a bedrock of people’s lives and drive powerful social justice movements. This revealing book shines a light on a crucial political moment, when joblessness and anxiety about the future of work have made themselves heard at a national level. Most of all, American Made is a story about people: who we consider to be one of us and how the dignity of work lies at the heart of who we are.
Visual Controls
Author: Chris A. Ortiz
Publisher: CRC Press
Published: 2018-06-28
Total Pages: 181
ISBN-13: 1466503262
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn effective visual communication system can help manufacturing employees eliminate significant waste from daily tasks. From work-zone color coding to posted metrics, visual controls clarify and simplify the path to enhanced processes and profits. Leaving little to chance, Visual Controls: Applying Visual Management to the Factory provides a detail
We Shall Not Be Moved: The Women's Factory Strike of 1909
Author: Joan Dash
Publisher: Turtleback Books
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780613061490
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the early 1900s, the shirtwaist industry in New York was very unfair to the young women employed in its factories. Now in paperback is the story of teenage workers and important female activists in their courageous fight for humane working conditions in 1909. Photos.
Faster, Better, Cheaper in the History of Manufacturing
Author: Christoph Roser
Publisher: CRC Press
Published: 2016-10-04
Total Pages: 419
ISBN-13: 1315350912
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe industrial revolution, mechanization, water and steam power, computers, and automation have given an enormous boost to manufacturing productivity. "Faster, Better, Cheaper" in the History of Manufacturing shows how the ability to make products faster, better, and cheaper has evolved from the stone age to modern times. It explains how different developments over time have raised efficiency and allowed the production of more and better products with less effort and materials, and hence faster, better, and cheaper. In addition, it describes the stories of inventors, entrepreneurs, and industrialists and looks at the intersection between technology, society, machines, materials, management, and – most of all – humans. "Faster, Better, Cheaper" in the History of Manufacturing follows this development throughout the ages. This book covers not only the technical aspects (mechanization, power sources, new materials, interchangeable parts, electricity, automation), but organizational innovations (division of labor, Fordism, Talyorism, Lean). Most of all, it is a story of the people that invented, manufactured, and marketed the products. The book shows how different developments over time raised efficiency and allowed production of more with less effort and materials, which brought us a large part of the wealth and prosperity we enjoy today. The stories of real inventors and industrialists are told, which includes not only their successes but also their problems and failures. The effect of good or bad management on manufacturing is a recurring theme in many chapters, as is the fight for intellectual property through thrilling tales of espionage. This is a story of successes and failures. It is not only about technology but also about social aspects. Ultimately, it is not a book about machines but about people!
Cubed
Author: Nikil Saval
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2015-01-06
Total Pages: 370
ISBN-13: 0345802802
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA New York Times Notable Book • Daily Beast Best Nonfiction of 2014 • Inc. Magazine's Most Thought-Provoking Books of the Year “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in cubicles.” How did we get from Scrooge’s office to “Office Space”? From bookkeepers in dark countinghouses to freelancers in bright cafes? What would the world be like without the vertical file cabinet? What would the world be like without the office at all? In Cubed, Nikil Saval chronicles the evolution of the office in a fascinating, often funny, and sometimes disturbing anatomy of the white-collar world and how it came to be the way it is. Drawing on the history of architecture and business, as well as a host of pop culture artifacts—from Mad Men to Dilbert (and, yes, The Office)—and ranging in time from the earliest clerical houses to the surprisingly utopian origins of the cubicle to the funhouse campuses of Silicon Valley, Cubed is an all-encompassing investigation into the way we work, why we do it the way we do (and often don’t like it), and how we might do better.
Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France
Author: Leonard N. Rosenband
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2000-09-15
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 9780801863929
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEight years before the French Revolution, the paper mill at Vidalon-le-Haut was the setting for a bitter strike and successful lockout. This labor dispute, resulting from conflicts between master papermakers and skilled journeymen, ultimately benefitted the mill's owners and administrators—the Montgolfier family. They converted the 1781 lockout into an opportunity to train a new kind of worker, a malleable employee, and to fashion a new sort of workplace, a theater of technological experiment. Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France: Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761-1805, gives us history from the workshop up, offering the most comprehensive exploration available of the historical experience of papermaking. Leonard N. Rosenband explains how paper was made, depicting the tools, techniques, raw materials, and seasonable flows of the craft, and explores the many conflicts and compromises between masters and men. Rosenband provides a compelling account of how technological change affected the papermaking industry, transforming an elaborate, established system of production. The Montgolfier archives are a rich source of information, providing records of daily output and procedures, including complex rules ranging from the precise hours of meals and prayer to matters of propriety and personal sanitation. They also provide insight into the attitudes of the Montgolfier family and their workers—what they made of their trade, their labor, and one another. This case study of the Montgolfier mill, adding details about technological innovation and shopfloor relations during a time of social unrest, enriches the current debate about the nature and impact of capitalism in France during the years leading up to the French Revolution.
