What did Frederick Taylor Think of Sweatshops?
What was revolutionary about Taylor’s scientific management, was the observation that rest and refreshment are necessary to quality and sustained work. Any profit gained by overwork and snatching time for mealtimes and rest breaks and from paying the least possible bare subsistence wage and over-work in unhealthy and unpleasant situations was meager compared to the output of the high productivity enterprise. In short, both Taylor and Marx held out solutions to sweatshops’ “slow sacrifice of humanity” (Marx, 1867: 244). For example, going back to Taylor (1911), his innovation in pay schemes was to introduce the idea of differential piece-rate systems. In his series of experiments he demonstrated that workers when performing a carefully calibrated and planned task, would increase their effort when wages increased by 60 per cent (p. 74). In short, raising quotas and extending the working day, were found to be less productive alternatives than ensuring “prosperity for the employee, coupled
