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U.S. History 1877-Present 3: Assenbly Lines and Unions 42319 Views
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Description:
Believe it or not, people used to have to work just as fast as the machines told them to. Yikes. Sounds more like a dystopian future movie. Where's Neo when you need him?
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak just when we thought it couldn't
- 00:05
get any bigger or better Electrification came along and made
- 00:09
possible something even bigger and better Yeah well better part
- 00:12
might be debatable And what are we talking about I
- 00:15
think called mass production which electricity made possible by bringing
Full Transcript
- 00:19
us the assembly line Well electricity powered moving belts along
- 00:23
which workers stood and did their part to assemble things
- 00:27
Well the assembly line or the line never stopped like
- 00:30
ever twenty four hours a day This meant that workers
- 00:33
did not decide the pace of the new york a
- 00:35
machine did Sure Before this people who worked on textile
- 00:39
machines couldn't control the pace either Really But that wasn't
- 00:42
true of every manufacturing jobs Like if a person made
- 00:45
cars in the days before the assembly line the team
- 00:47
put a vehicle together as quickly as they could Or
- 00:50
should we say as slowly as they dared for fear
- 00:53
their bosses wrath for being slow Well even so workers
- 00:56
took breaks if a part was missing Well they went
- 00:59
to look for it If their breakfast burrito was causing
- 01:02
a little trouble well they could run off you know
- 01:04
Take care of that But the assembly line put the
- 01:06
kibosh on being human All the parts were there Every
- 01:09
worker worked alone in his or her spot on the
- 01:12
line Like they were kind of sort of a robot
- 01:14
with the blood and bad breath No team no conversation
- 01:18
no brakes Well that might have up the suck factor
- 01:21
in a lot of workers live The assembly line also
- 01:24
majorly upped productivity but this ended up turning the businessmen
- 01:29
who owned the factories into productivity junkies Efficiency experts like
- 01:33
frederick winslow taylor made a living going into factories and
- 01:37
showing owners how they could make people work faster That
- 01:40
he wasn't all that popular in the union break room
- 01:43
that told this took on the workers who had to
- 01:45
go at absolute top speed for ten hours a day
- 01:47
six days a week Well hey what are you going
- 01:50
to dio workers did what the line told them or
- 01:52
they were out the door Speed was king The electrified
- 01:55
factories of america Speed was money to this is why
- 01:59
runners from kenya were suddenly rich Just getting all this
- 02:03
electric speed though that companies could produce even more goods
- 02:07
Introduced more products hire more people and export more stuff
- 02:11
cheaper than most of the rest of the world could
- 02:14
Well it was tough on workers It built america into
- 02:16
the economic powerhouse it is today And eventually the workers
- 02:20
formed unions which fought tooth and nail to get a
- 02:23
more square fair deal Well guess what Automobile tycoon henry
- 02:27
ford actually ended up doing workers a solid by offering
- 02:31
them the eight hour work day like he invented that
- 02:33
he also up there paid a five bucks a day
- 02:36
and don't laugh five bucks a day At the time
- 02:39
most unskilled workers were on ly getting about four dollars
- 02:42
a week Five bucks a day was crazy Good for
- 02:46
these folks right Real partnership between workers and the bosses
- 02:50
and all that Well it made work in one of
- 02:52
those hard jobs in america seem a lot less sucky
- 02:55
really get paid for it and not much to complain
- 02:57
about right Well the turnover rate it ford factories went
- 03:00
from three hundred seventy percent in nineteen fourteen meaning three
- 03:04
point seven people quit for everyone who stayed when the
- 03:06
deal started tow only sixteen percent turn over a year
- 03:10
Later while sure workers were still doing a monotonous job
- 03:13
But at the end of the day they got enough
- 03:15
cash to live a modestly comfortable life and probably by
- 03:19
some ford cars as well Right Oh yeah they got
- 03:22
weekends as shown by the famous union slogan from the
- 03:25
folks who brought you the weekend Yeah so if they
- 03:28
were really cool more like a from the folks who
- 03:30
brought you the three day weekend when you think about
- 03:33
that hey well we can dream about having a life 00:03:36.348 --> [endTime] like europeans
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