Rivethead Social Issues Of Work Essay Research

Rivethead; Social Issues Of Work Essay, Research Paper

Introduction

Ben Hampers book Rivethead; Tales From The Assembly

Line is a gritty in your face account of a factory workers

struggles against his factory, his co-workers, and the time

clock. Hamper makes no apologies for any of his actions,

many of which were unorthodox or illegal. Instead he

justifies them in a way that makes the factory workers

strife apparent to those who have never set foot on an

assembly line and wouldn.t have the vaguest idea how much

blood, sweat and tears go into the products we take for

granted everyday.

Rivethead is an account of the entire life of Author

Ben Hamper, from his long family lineage of .shoprats. and

his catholic school upbringing to his numerous different

positions on the General Motors assembly line and his

equally numerous lay-offs from the GM Truck & Bus Division.

Unfortunately the many years of back breaking labor combined

with Hampers own personal demons led him to check into an

outpatient mental facility (at the time of the completion of

this book) where he learns daily to cope with his many years

of mental anguish.

Rivethead is a social commentary on industrial America,

assembly line work , and the auto industry. This essay,

however, will focus on the more specific aspects

Hamper considers, such as the monotony required on a (then)

modern assembly line, the relationship and hierarchy among

workers and their interaction with management as well as

both collective and individual responses to work and job

satisfaction (or lack there of).

Analysis

When Henry Ford first developed the idea of the

assembly line he was heralded as one of the most forward

thinking men of his time, and without the assembly line we

would no doubt not be as powerful a nation as we are today.

The assembly line principle as it matured in industrial

society however, proved to destroy workers creativity and

stifle the very essence of human life. Growth and change.

On an assembly line workers are degraded to automatons,

performing the same tasks over and over and over. Day in day

out, without ever having any knowledge or input into any of

the other tasks related to completion of the project. This

monotony in the workplace spills over into the daily life of

many factory workers and affects how they live their life

outside of the factory after the whistle blows as much as it

does while they.re on the assembly line. This spillover was

observed by Hamper of his Grandfather. .Straight home from

work, dinner, the evening news and immediately into bed at

7:00 p.m. He arose each weekday at 3:30 a.m., fixed himself

some black coffee, turned on the kitchen radio, smoked a

handful of Lucky Strikes and waited to leave for work at a

quarter to five. This regimen never varied one iota in the

forty years he worked for GM. (Hamper pg.6). It is fairly

clear that the monotony of the assembly line has a way of

setting personal routines for it.s workers that eventually

work their way out of the factory and into the home. One

interesting question that is raised, is whether people who

like their life to be routinized eventually find their way

to an assembly line or if the assembly line monotony brings

the propensity to routinize out in people who previously did

not live by many routines.

The relationships Hamper discusses between the workers

on the assembly line are unique to say the least and

sometimes comical or dangerous. After reading this book I

would surmise that most factory workers build friendships

with other factory workers almost exclusively. This could be

due to their similarity of interests, similarity of jobs,

the fact that they are in contact daily, or just by virtue

of the timing of their shifts (as was Hampers case). I think

one thing that helped to bind the workers together was the

fact that they saw it as workers against management and by

their solidarity they could turn the balance of power in

their favor. This solidarity was visible when a new

supervisor was hired who wasn.t cutting the workers any

slack, so the workers resorted to sabotage. .We simply had

no other recourse. Sometimes these power-gods had to be

reminded that it was we, the workers, who kept this place

runnin.. (Hamper pg.206). Relationships between workers were

generally very good, although there was a hierarchy among

the workers between the new guys and the experienced guys.

.Franklin…made a career out of intimidating rookies.

(Hamper pg.51) because until a worker had put in 90 days he

could be fired for any reason. Not all of Hamper.s

co-workers saw eye to eye with him when it came to his

column in the Flint Voice. After one column

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