The History of the Vespa by Andrea Rapini

Author:Andrea Rapini [Rapini, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Italy, Modern, 20th Century, Social History
ISBN: 9780429663482
Google: UvODDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-01-16T01:34:34+00:00

3. Discipline, Time and the Scientific Organization of Work

Following a turnover of managers, in September of 1946 Enrico Piaggio established a precedent for industrial relations: the company recognized the Works Council as the only “representative body of the workers.”33 Although the workers continuously sought to preserve a minimum level of power to intervene in issues such as discipline, layoffs, overtime and the purview of the Works Council, not to mention basic strategic choices such as technology and investment, they were excluded from any decisions about company governance as early as the first months of 1947. The monthly meetings between management and the Works Council thus became increasingly ritual in nature, confirming month after month that organized labor was being deprived of its authority and, in some cases, even humiliated. The prospect that the workers would receive something in exchange for their policy of productive collaboration and thus gain some kind of compensation, at least in terms of greater industrial democracy, turned out to be illusory. Even before the Cold War erupted in the second half of 1947, it was already clear that this hope would go unfulfilled at Pontedera.34

As far as wages are concerned, compensation must be framed in the context of changes in the scientific organization of work that occurred during reconstruction. This crucial issue offers a window onto not only the changes that took place in material working conditions but also on the ways in which institutions regulated these changes.

Piaggio set up an office for analyzing times and methods starting in the 1930s, proof of the company’s use of Taylorist production methods.35 These methods involved reducing the discretion exercised by individual workers and studying the best way of producing the good in question. They also entailed putting workers in charge of monitoring processing times, as no Taylorist factory was complete without a timekeeper.36 The scientific organization of labor was combined with collective piecework. This system of remuneration, first introduced to Italy by Fiat in 1921, was “egalitarian” insofar as it leveled out any earnings outside of the average; but, at the same time, it dulled workers’ motivation to accelerate work times and improve yield because the piecework totals were counted for the production of an entire section rather than individual workers.37 Fas cinated by these features, the magazine of the Italian Communist Party, Lo Stato Operaio, went as far as to define it as “an elementary and particular form of collectivization.”38 Antonio Gramsci’s own fascination with Fordism is well known: despite his obviously fierce critiques of both Fascism and the American capitalist model, he saw Fordism as having some positive features of “a programmatic economy.”39

In December 1945, Piaggio prepared to re-instate the time and method office with the introduction of individual piecework—which was better for stimulating workers’ productivity—with a view of reorganizing the workshops and achieving more competitivity on the market.40 It is worth noting that, at first, the management, the workers and the union were all in perfect agreement. The head of the company was able to

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