Henry Ford, Work Requirements, and DNA
Are we really doing everything we can to assess our labor markets?
I’m not quite sure how I feel about the work requirements proffered by Matt Gaetz and the Republican Congress.
To be sure, I think it unlikely that Medicaid work requirements will pass or that it’s even desirable that it pass. Nor do I think if people voluntarily refuse to work that they’ll be denied health care. We aren’t that sort of country notwithstanding whatever you might have read.
But should they pass? I think they should — with some caveats.
We are in a tight labor market at the moment — so much so that Republicans are rolling back the rules that had barred child labor laws.
The solution to our tight labor market isn’t importing the Third World or putting our thirteen year olds to work but to hire our neighbor off the couch. If he has anything approximating dignity we must clean him up, help him get on his feet (should he be able to stand), and put him to the task of building up America alongside us.
There are quite a number able bodied men who seemingly can’t work. If you have a labor force you should think about its health. You should restrict the plastics and forever chemicals in the water and food supply. You should do drug tests.
In my view, the problem has been the U.S. government hasn’t been encouraging employers to get creative with how they might employ people at all levels of the society. Instead the Chamber of Commerce is seemingly in favor of a ponzi scheme immigration policy.
The answer is always more immigrants without any concern to the effect that mass migration might have on other countries, on native-born workers, on the schools, water or plumbing of a town. Yes, too often the answer for the business community has been to replace their fellow Americans with often cheaper foreigners without any consideration of the negative externalities. This must stop or we won’t have a country for very much longer. Do you really think the world can afford everyone consuming on American levels?
When America ruled the world she was about 50 percent of global GDP. This success happened because the world was on its back and seemingly everyone worked.
We don’t have the luxury of a massive world war destroying other countries’ industrial pass so we will have to do a much better job at increasing worker productivity.
To have everyone work you have to know what they’re good at and so you have to observe them. You have to study them.
I think, ultimately, you have to know your workers fully and that means knowing their DNA.
Now it’s ultimately illegal to discriminate against someone for some preexisting genetic condition. I support this totally. But what about discriminating in favor of some trait you’re looking for? I’m thinking here of would be employees signaling to would be employers about traits that their resume wouldn’t entirely convey. How would you respond if a worker gave you his or her DNA analysis?
In subsequent posts we might explore which of the major tech companies — Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, or Google — would be best positioned for the computing power needed to fully analyze the world’s populations.
If these companies — with all their vast information behind them — can’t figure this out, I suspect we might well be truly lost.
Perhaps we haven’t fully considered past efforts. Are we really making the case that America’s employers aren’t capable of doing the sorts of assessments necessary when they were routinely done decades or even a century ago?
Well, let’s consider one of the greatest employers of all time — Henry Ford.
After all, Henry Ford’s book — My Life and My Work (1922)— is well worth considering and he helpfully laid it all out over a hundred years ago.
In a previous chapter I noted that no one applying for work is refused on account of physical condition. This policy went into effect on January 12, 1914, at the time of setting the minimum wage at five dollars a day and the working day at eight hours. It carried with it the further condition that no one should be discharged on account of physical condition, except, of course, in the case of contagious disease. I think that if an industrial institution is to fill its whole role, it ought to be possible for a cross-section of its employees to show about the same proportions as a cross-section of a society in general. We have always with us the maimed and the halt. There is a most generous disposition to regard all of these people who are physically incapacitated for labour as a charge on society and to support them by charity. There are cases where I imagine that the support must be by charity--as, for instance, an idiot. But those cases are extraordinarily rare, and we have found it possible, among the great number of different tasks that must be performed somewhere in the company, to find an opening for almost any one and on the basis of production. The blind man or cripple can, in the particular place to which he is assigned, perform just as much work and receive exactly the same pay as a wholly able-bodied man would. We do not prefer cripples--but we have demonstrated that they can earn full wages.
It would be quite outside the spirit of what we are trying to do, to take on men because they were crippled, pay them a lower wage, and be content with a lower output. That might be directly helping the men but it would not be helping them in the best way. The best way is always the way by which they can be put on a productive par with able-bodied men. I believe that there is very little occasion for charity in this world--that is, charity in the sense of making gifts. Most certainly business and charity cannot be combined; the purpose of a factory is to produce, and it ill serves the community in general unless it does produce to the utmost of its capacity. We are too ready to assume without investigation that the full possession of faculties is a condition requisite to the best performance of all jobs. To discover just what was the real situation, I had all of the different jobs in the factory classified to the kind of machine and work--whether the physical labour involved was light, medium, or heavy; whether it were a wet or a dry job, and if not, with what kind of fluid; whether it were clean or dirty; near an oven or a furnace; the condition of the air; whether one or both hands had to be used; whether the employee stood or sat down at his work; whether it was noisy or quiet; whether it required accuracy; whether the light was natural or artificial; the number of pieces that had to be handled per hour; the weight of the material handled; and the description of the strain upon the worker. It turned out at the time of the inquiry that there were then 7,882 different jobs in the factory. Of these, 949 were classified as heavy work requiring strong, able-bodied, and practically physically perfect men; 3,338 required men of ordinary physical development and strength. The remaining 3,595 jobs were disclosed as requiring no physical exertion and could be performed by the slightest, weakest sort of men. In fact, most of them could be satisfactorily filled by women or older children. The lightest jobs were again classified to discover how many of them required the use of full faculties, and we found that 670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637 by one-legged men, 2 by armless men, 715 by one-armed men, and 10 by blind men. Therefore, out of 7,882 kinds of jobs, 4,034--although some of them required strength--did not require full physical capacity. That is, developed industry can provide wage work for a higher average of standard men than are ordinarily included in any normal community. If the jobs in any one industry or, say, any one factory, were analyzed as ours have been analyzed, the proportion might be very different, yet I am quite sure that if work is sufficiently subdivided--subdivided to the point of highest economy--there will be no dearth of places in which the physically incapacitated can do a man's job and get a man's wage. It is economically most wasteful to accept crippled men as charges and then to teach them trivial tasks like the weaving of baskets or some other form of unremunerative hand labour, in the hope, not of aiding them to make a living, but of preventing despondency.
When a man is taken on by the Employment Department, the theory is to put him into a job suited to his condition. If he is already at work and he does not seem able to perform the work, or if he does not like his work, he is given a transfer card, which he takes up to the transfer department, and after an examination he is tried out in some other work more suited to his condition or disposition. Those who are below the ordinary physical standards are just as good workers, rightly placed, as those who are above. For instance, a blind man was assigned to the stock department to count bolts and nuts for shipment to branch establishments. Two other able-bodied men were already employed on this work. In two days the foreman sent a note to the transfer department releasing the able-bodied men because the blind man was able to do not only his own work but also the work that had formerly been done by the sound men.
This salvage can be carried further. It is usually taken for granted that when a man is injured he is simply out of the running and should be paid an allowance. But there is always a period of convalescence, especially in fracture cases, where the man is strong enough to work, and, indeed, by that time usually anxious to work, for the largest possible accident allowance can never be as great as a man's wage. If it were, then a business would simply have an additional tax put upon it, and that tax would show up in the cost of the product. There would be less buying of the product and therefore less work for somebody. That is an inevitable sequence that must always be borne in mind.
We have experimented with bedridden men--men who were able to sit up. We put black oilcloth covers or aprons over the beds and set the men to work screwing nuts on small bolts. This is a job that has to be done by hand and on which fifteen or twenty men are kept busy in the Magneto Department. The men in the hospital could do it just as well as the men in the shop and they were able to receive their regular wages. In fact, their production was about 20 per cent., I believe, above the usual shop production. No man had to do the work unless he wanted to. But they all wanted to. It kept time from hanging on their hands. They slept and ate better and recovered more rapidly.
No particular consideration has to be given to deaf-and-dumb employees. They do their work one hundred per cent. The tubercular employees--and there are usually about a thousand of them--mostly work in the material salvage department. Those cases which are considered contagious work together in an especially constructed shed. The work of all of them is largely out of doors.
At the time of the last analysis of employed, there were 9,563 sub-standard men. Of these, 123 had crippled or amputated arms, forearms, or hands. One had both hands off. There were 4 totally blind men, 207 blind in one eye, 253 with one eye nearly blind, 37 deaf and dumb, 60 epileptics, 4 with both legs or feet missing, 234 with one foot or leg missing. The others had minor impediments.
The length of time required to become proficient in the various occupations is about as follows: 43 per cent. of all the jobs require not over one day of training; 36 per cent. require from one day to one week; 6 per cent. require from one to two weeks; 14 per cent. require from one month to one year; one per cent. require from one to six years. The last jobs require great skill--as in tool making and die sinking.
The discipline throughout the plant is rigid. There are no petty rules, and no rules the justice of which can reasonably be disputed. The injustice of arbitrary discharge is avoided by confining the right of discharge to the employment manager, and he rarely exercises it. The year 1919 is the last on which statistics were kept. In that year 30,155 changes occurred. Of those 10,334 were absent more than ten days without notice and therefore dropped. Because they refused the job assigned or, without giving cause, demanded a transfer, 3,702 were let go. A refusal to learn English in the school provided accounted for 38 more; 108 enlisted; about 3,000 were transferred to other plants. Going home, going into farming or business accounted for about the same number. Eighty-two women were discharged because their husbands were working--we do not employ married women whose husbands have jobs. Out of the whole lot only 80 were flatly discharged and the causes were: Misrepresentation, 56; by order of Educational Department, 20; and undesirable, 4.