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NEU Senior Regional Support Officer
Slow down, you move too fast
DOUG NICHOLLS, general secretary of the GFTU, in the fourth of his weekly features, reflects on the importance of slowing down the pace of work to tackle inequality

TIME and motion studies in factories were once led by brown-coated foremen with clipboards. 

When trying to analyse the processes of well-organised shop floor workers, their puzzled expressions reflected the hopelessness of trying to get us working faster for no extra pay.

Nowadays, with less organisation in the workplace, just in time production, instant targets to meet and inhuman tracking and delivery in logistics and online ordering, the contemporary foreman needs a PhD in maths to shave a few seconds off “waste” in the labour process and unfortunately workers are more exposed and less able to collectively invent ruses to prevent speed-up.

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