X Is Not About Y: Technological Improvements and Cognitive-Physical Demands

It's been commented on before, once or twice!

Hitherto [1848] it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers become the common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot.

— John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy

Like every other increase in the productiveness of labour, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities, and, by shortening that portion of the working-day in which the labourer works for himself, to lengthen the other portion that he gives, without an equivalent, to the capitalist.

— Karl Marx, Capital

'Twas ever thus. Bob at WidgetCorp says to his boss "You are demanding an unfair amount of labor from me for the wages you offer. You are demanding that I make 20 widgets a day. 15 widgets - or a raise - would be more fair." Management says "don't fret Bob! We've just installed the new Widgetron™. Making widgets will take half the time! By the way... we now need you to make 40 widgets a day. Hop to it."

I think you're giving the bosses here too much credit - or too little, I guess, depending on how you look at it, The main template describes how people may deceive themselves about their motivations for doing X. But surely in your example the employers never believed that reducing workload and stress were why they were getting the new big-ass printer? They got it because it was an investment in a new piece of equipment that would increase their profits by allowing their workers to make more signs in the same amount of time.

I mean, unless your employers are very different to mine, the "they realize" and "instead" parts of your subtemplate don't apply. There's no instead. They got the printer to maximize profits and then came up with something to tell their workforce about how it would reduce stress and workload. They lied - though the individuals involved might have described euphemistically it as "positive spin" or whatever.

Now, maybe your employers are nicer than mine - maybe your bosses only realized after they bought the BAP that they could use it to increase profits - but in my experience, top brass don't sign off on spending a bunch of money on new technology unless it has been thoroughly demonstrated that the new technology will help the bottom line. I would have said that usually it goes:

Employer realizes that technological artifact X can be used to increase productivity and decide to introduce it. In an attempt to maintain workplace morale as an added benefit, they bullshit their workers about how technological artifact X will reduce physical and/or cognitive demands.

Though this strategy can backfire when the workforce realize that T.A. X reduces physical demands while increasing cognitive demands, or reduces cognitive demands while increasing physical demands, or reduces neither, or worst of all, reduces the necessary workforce. Still, by the time they realize this it's often to late to do anything about it and T.A. X is the new normal.

Nobody ever tells Bob that his new target is, say, 35 widgets - an actual decrease in real workload - unless Bob has some leverage, whether it be labor laws or his union or his ability to take his skills and experience across the road to Widgets'R'Us.

Here is my simplistic understanding of economy:

Imagine that Alice can create 100 utilons if she works alone. Bob can also create 100 utilons if he works alone. (They are doing different things.) But if Alice and Bob cooperate, they can create 500 utilons together. How will those 500 utilons be divided between them?

The answer depends on how easy it is for Alice to replace Bob in their partnership, and how easy it is for Bob to replace Alice. If there is only one Alice, but thousands of Bobs, we can expect that Alice will keep 399 utilons, and Bob will get 101 utilons. Because if he doesn't take the deal, some other Bob will.

Now imagine that Alice + Bob + Machine can make 1000 utilons if they all work together. What happens now?

Well, if there is still only one Alice and thousand Bobs, and if Alice owns the Machine... again, we can expect Bob to get the same 101 utilons, or get replaced by another Bob.

(Of course in real life there is usually more than literally one Alice, but the point is about how relatively easy it is for each side to replace the other side.)

The new machine has nothing to do with anything. Your bosses will try to get as much productivity out of you as possible, just below the point at which you will quit and go somewhere else. So how hard you have to work isn't a function of the conditions at your workplace, but rather a function of the conditions at the other jobs you could possibly move to (and of how hard other potential workers are willing to work).

For example it could have been that there wasn't much demand for more signs, and so when you got the new machine your employers couldn't increase production. But this wouldn't have meant you had to work less hard. Instead they would have fired some of the workforce until the rest of you were working just as hard as before.