How VW's Chattanooga plant 'Maximizes Production' from Workers -- It's Brutal and Beyond Inhumane [View all]

[Liberal_in_LA]

Take a Look at How One Factory 'Maximizes Production' from Workers -- It's Brutal and Beyond Inhumane
VW's Chattanooga plant provides a window into productivity-maximizing management schemes.

One of VW’s core lean tactics is “workforce flexibility”: competitive pressure from temps or part-timers.

At the Chattanooga plant, permanent employees work alongside “temporary” workers, some of whom have actually worked there for years. Pitted against one another, both groups fear to speak up.

Workers are routinely pushed to their physical and emotional breaking points. From management’s point of view, this maximizes productivity.

“Every employee there busts their ass and is injured and is working through the pain because they don’t want their job taken by a temp,” Amanda says. “It is made clear to all of us that we are easy to replace.”

That’s lean production in a nutshell: ruthless efficiency, produced by a system of efficient ruthlessness. Workers are deliberately stretched to their limits, by a combination of competitive pressure, inadequate training, repetitive stress, and rotating shifts—so that the weakest links can be identified and eliminated.
http://www.alternet.org/labor/take-look-one-factory-maximizes-production-us-workers-2015-its-brutal-and-beyond-inhumane