Dead zone revisited. posted by Richard Seymour

You may very well have heard the complaint before: "they treat me as if I'm a robot or something!" This is the trouble with the workers - they refuse to be robots. They refuse, in their curious Luddite fashion, to have computer technology implanted into their bodies which is controlled by remote sattelite dishes and which tells them exactly when to move and how. Take this , for example:

Workers in warehouses across Britain are being "electronically tagged" by being asked to wear small computers to cut costs and increase the efficient delivery of goods and food to supermarkets, a report revealed yesterday.
New US satellite- and radio-based computer technology is turning some workplaces into "battery farms" and creating conditions similar to "prison surveillance", according to a report from Michael Blakemore, professor of geography at Durham University.

The technology, introduced six months ago, is spreading rapidly, with up to 10,000 employees using it to supply household names such as Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Boots and Marks & Spencer.

...

Martin Dodge, a researcher at the centre for advanced spatial analysis at University College London, said: "These de vices mark the total 'disappearance of disappearance' where the employee is unable to do anything without the machine knowing or monitoring."

...

One firm, Peacock Retail Group, claims workers like the system. The company, which has a modern centre in Nantgarw, south Wales, where employees have 28 wearable computers and six mounted on trucks, says the system has a positive impact on team morale. "Everybody likes the wearables because they are comfortable and easy to use. The result is the team finds it easier to do the job," it says on the company website.

A spokeswoman for Tesco last night insisted that the company was not using the technology to monitor the staff and said it was making employees' work easier and reducing the need for paper.

But at the GMB's annual conference in Newcastle yesterday one of the union's national officers, Paul Campbell, said: "We are having reports of people walking out of jobs after a few days' work, in some cases just a few hours. They are all saying that they don't like the job because they have no input. They just followed a computer's instructions."

Henry Ford once asked "how come, when I just want a pair of hands, I get a human being too?" The answer is that the only other animal that comes with a pair of hands is a monkey, and monkeys aren't generally very efficient. The other answer is that what Ford was looking for is a disposable commodity that wouldn't have needs, grudges or grievances, one that wouldn't answer back, try to change the terms of its use or renegotiate its price. The problem with purchasing labour is that it is a distinctly unusual commodity, imbued with intentionality. Which is why, for capitalism to survive, it will have to invent a master race of robots with nuclear powered limbs and octagonal-shaped bodies and blood-sucking devices, that will enslave humanity. That may seem rather hellish to you, but imagine the profits. Think of the boost to the economy. Why be so recalcitrant as to obstruct economic progress?