Hanging tongues

In the course of reading reference 1, ongoing, I was prompted to ask Google about production line work and he turned up reference 2, a short and accessible account of a nine week stint at a Midwest slaughterhouse by a chap who is now a professor of sociology at East Texas A&M University, to be found at reference 3. Which I thought rather enterprising of him.

Ever curious, I poked this university around, but failed to find what 'A&M' stood for, although I thought that 'A' was probably agricultural. 'M' for marine or medical? So I asked Gemini, who came up with 'Agricultural and Mechanical'. Now supplied with the name, I was able to turn up the confirming page on Wikipedia at reference 4 - and I now know something of the interesting history of the Texas A&M University System. It's not only the old countries which have quirky bits of history...

A good result for Gemini. Both in the sense in that he provided the right answer and in that, having got the answer, it was easy to check it. One might nit-pick about the details, but it is near enough. Good enough to include in one's own essay if one tidies it up a bit!

While the paper at reference 2 was a good result for me, telling me something of what goes on on an assembly line. A few snippets follow.

The line was run at near 200 cows an hour which meant that the work was hard. On the other hand, it was well paid, starting at more than $5 an hour more than the minimum wage (this in 1983). Presumably management had decided that a fast line with high wages was the way forward, but I did wonder why not a lightly slower line with slightly lower wages?

The high wages appeared to mean that many of the employees were trapped there, having quickly got used to a high spending life-style which they could not otherwise have afforded. I remember being told of something of the same sort among clerks at our Building Societies of old, who at that time used to get very cheap mortgages, a significant perk. Also a trap which made it hard for the women to leave and have families.

The work in the slaughterhouse was hard, monotonous and pretty grim. Plus plenty of cuts and some worse injuries. Given the set up and the noise, talking was not much of an option. But it seemed that after a while, one could do the work and day dream or otherwise think about something else at the same time. We are told of one worker who spent quality time rehearsing the next moves in his restoration of an antique car. Maybe a muscular actor could rehearse his lines.

Some pride in being able to stick to unpleasant and necessary work. Some esprit de corps.

There was also a modest amount of horseplay, perhaps involving throwing lumps of meat about. I associate to stories from an overnight shelf stacker at Sainsbury's, telling us of occasional food fights to break up the monotony.

No serious sabotage as workers and their families were apt to be eating the final product, via Walmart or wherever.

No interest in organising or joining a union.

One of the features of breaks was showing off one's latest wheels, with groups of workers popping out to the parking lot to inspect same.

So various devices to make a little bit of space in which to be a normal human being.

I only worry that, coming from a background of something called symbolic interactionism (for which see reference 5), Thompson did indeed find what was looking for. But I have not pursued that one.

Nor did Thompson pursue the slightly odd racial demographics at his slaughterhouse, a place employing near 2,000 people.

PS: hanging tongues is more or less exactly what Thompson did in his time there.

References

Reference 1: Civilization and its discontents – S. Freud – 1930. 

Reference 2: Hanging tongues: A sociological encounter with the assembly line – William E. Thompson – 1983.

Reference 3: https://www.tamuc.edu/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Texas_A%26M_University.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_interactionism.