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Chris Nyl: Department of Economics, University of Wollongong, Australia
Analysts who depict Frederick Taylor and his close associates as villains tend to base their arguments on secondary literature and/or on a cursory and selective reading of some of Taylor's works. This article looks at an example of such a reading that is concerned with the contribution of the early Taylorists to the reduction of working hours. The article has two primary objectives. First, by examining an instance of the form of analysis of which Schachter[1 ] is so critical, the article seeks to add to her call for researchers to display greater rigour when analysing the history of the scientific management movement. Second, by advancing important new evidence, the article seeks to extend Nyland's work on the contribution of the scientific managers to the rationalization of standard time schedules[2].
The vehicle utilized to support the arguments of both Schachter and Nyland is Roediger's 1988 article[3]. Contrasting Taylor and Ford, Roediger asserts that Ford's "attitudes on the working day...set him apart from, and above, Taylor": "At a time when other employers, especially in the Taylorized industries, fought bitterly before conceding labor's long cherished goal of the eight-hour day, Ford gave the concession away...Although, as Harry Braverman has observed, Fordism shared much with scientific management, the two ideas differed sharply where the working day was concerned[3, p. 136]."
Prior to the First World War, Roediger further claims, reform arguments regarding the benefits of shorter hours failed to gain the support of the scientific management movement. Consequently, he argues that the Taylorists failed to develop a case for shorter working hours as a managerial reform. The reason the scientific managers are said to have opposed the demand for shorter hours was because worktime reform tends to unite workers: "Taylor's ideal of a "high-priced man", set apart from his fellows by the desire for premium pay, translated easily into managerial practice regarding wages. Cuts in hours, in contrast, would have had to influence whole departments, producing the kind of group feeling that was anathema to Taylor[3, pp. 136-7]."
Finally, Roediger asserts that Taylor had little concern with worker physiology and that the scientific managers denied that the psychology of individual workers played a complex part in the determination of...