Abstract

In the steel industry, the abstraction of labor was perfected through labor's “simplification.” This was brought about by the intensive development and installation of a particular type of technology that organized work according to its own requirements. Although the introduction of this technology was legitimated in terms of the demands of productivity, it served primarily as a tactic against the early union movement rather than to increase production. The simpler the work, the more it was arranged in advance by technological requirements, the more dispensable were the worker's skills. This meant a greater interchangeability of workers with the result that union organizing became increasingly vulnerable to the labor reserve that could be called in to undermine strikes.