Speed up

The results of this generalized speedup of the corporate metabolism are multiple: shorter product life cycles, more leasing and renting, more frequent buying and selling, more ephemeral consumption patterns, […]

There were, of course, those observers who argued that since in some industries 50 or 60 per cent of those employed were scientific, technical, and administrative staff, the employer would soon include them in his speedup plans.

For the mass of new workers who had not come out of a syndicalist or craft tradition, incentive pay and the speedup idea carried relatively little negative meaning.

The strike was over a speedup of the assembly line, which in the previous week had increased from 49 to 58 cars per hour. Out of this strike emerged the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM).

With constant speedup of the line and with the cold temperatures of the plant, one angry worker told me, “After ten years, people walk like they're sixty or seventy."