CONTENTS - ouroboros ponderosa

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IJusiness UIvielV; the May-June /lIJU carried "Protillclivity Iht' Prllhlnll
Behind the Headlines" by Burton Malhicl. /rulll.l'lty V"d of May 1,1
spoke of "a new cmphasis on office productivity," in its "Rcmovill Ihe
Cages from the Corporate Zoo."
Meanwhile, unions and the left publicly exhibited their delusion, if 1101
callousness, on the subject. Befitting their roles as champions of "honesl
toil" and the "good worker," the entire crisis is denied by them! The May
'79 AFL-CIO Federationist and the June '79 Monthly Review, in "Bringing
Produellvlty lOtO Focus" and "Productivity Slowdown: A False Alarm,"
respectively, disputed the facts of diminishing work output and ignored
the individual's primacy in productivity.
Returning to reality, Lawrence Baytos offered "Nine Strategies for
Productivity" in the July '79 Personnel Journal, John Niler wrote of
"Diagnosing and Trcating the Symptoms of Low Productivity" in
August'S Supervisory Management, and the August 7 Wall Street Journal
front-paged "White Collar Workers Start to Get attention in Productivity
Studies: Employees Resist."
On June 4 and September 10, 1979 Time editorialized on the plight of
America, in "The Weakness that Starts at Home" and "The Fascination
here the growing awareness of how critical the changing work posture is,
of Decadence," Considcring the mass circulation involved, we glimpse
The June essay deals with "a damaging slackness ... in U.S. society at
large" and locates a key part of the problem in "the state of American
productivity, which after several years of declining growth has in recent
months actually dipped below zero progress." September's opinion piece
delar:d that "the work ethic is nearly as dead as the Weimar Republic,"
cillng the last busmess quarter's alarming 3.8% decline in productivity"
as a symptom of decadence. It is a certainty that the '80s will see even
more on capital's productivity dilemma, inasmuch as it cannot be
ship which is capitalism. Business Week of October J, 1979, fretted over
"solved" without the destruction of that wage-labor/commodity relation­
"Why It Won't Be Easy to Boost Productivity," and in mid-October
Theodore Barry & Associates (management consultants) reported their
fmdmgs that the average worker is productive during only 55% of
workmg hours. James Fields, of the Barry firm, said this compares with
O to . 85% spent productively working around the turn of the century;
the Imphcallons of that are staggering," declared Fields. The "team
concept" of work improvement received a most negative judgement by
Latane, Wilhams, and Harkins' "Social Loafing." Their November '79
Psychology Today article concluded that output-per-hour actually declines
in groups. And so on, into the new decade.
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