Friday, October 10, 2008
Division of Labor
Division of labor can be classified into social division of labor and division of labor in detail. Division of labor is so-called the derivative of the specific character of work. Division of labor practiced by capitalist destroys occupations as the workers insufficient to carry through any complete production process. Under capitalism, work is divided along the sex lines, every man or woman must do their jobs efficiently. Each man and woman has their responsible on a certain part of the processes. Division of labor provides the workers to become expert only in a certain part of job. They only do a part of the whole the processes, even though they have skills to do more than that. So with this principle, capitalist have their reason to pay the workers at a lower wages as they only do a part of the jobs. The workers have no choice and have to follow the routine and are forced to work overtime without any extra wages. This principle become more worst as the workers spend a bunch of hours only on doing the same things, the same part of the processes , which not be worth as making for a single product. We can see that, the quality of the products might be low as there is no skilled workers work in the specific portion to produce the products. However, division of labor sometimes seems like having advantages. Division of labor increases the quantity of work, where the same number of workers in the difference portion of work performing the same work.
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2 comments:
Division of labor does not “destroy occupation in a capitalist society.” The division of labor is a system practiced in capitalism because it is efficient in maximizing output, which increases profit. Dividing the production of goods into various production phases increases the need for a workforce. Currently this might not mean that a worker needs to cut out a certain shape of metal for the next worker to weld it because of introduction of technology into the division of labor. Now the division of labor uses workers to manage the machine that is doing the actual work. The only way I see that the division of labor could destroy occupation in a capitalist society is the fact that the mobility of capital allows corporations to locate production facilities in other countries. This does destroy occupation in the country of origin but creates job opportunities in the location where the facility is. It isn’t that division of labor destroys occupation opportunity. It destroys the quality of the worker because instead of knowing a skill or craft completely, the worker only needs to know how to do one part of the entire process in that skill.
I also agree that the division of labor does not "destroy occupations in a capitalist society." Instead, jobs are simply moved overseas where they can pay employees cheaper labor to do this de-skilled work. Although this move increases job opportunities in less fortune countries, it does not help the citizens of the United States, when we too are struggling in our economy. I also, do not believe that the quality of products will decrease due to a single person performing a single task to complete their work. Although these workers are doing de-skilled division of labor work, they are still supervised by a higher official that has plenty of knowledge about the company and the product that they are manufacturing. That is the whole idea behind the division of labor. They only need one knowledgeable person to run a group of non-skilled workers that are only performing a section of the finished product. This in turn saves the company money because they are not paying for a full staff of college degree employees. In my eyes, the division of labor has its perks, but it also has its downfalls.
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