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Editors’ note: This article is from the Summer 2022 issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly, “Owning Our Economy, Owning Our Future.”
If you performed a task at four times the rate of productivity, shouldn’t you receive four times the pay?
In his 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Management, mechanical engineer and management consultant Frederick Winslow Taylor tells the story of how he convinced a worker at the Bethlehem Steel company, whom he named “Schmidt,” to increase the amount of crude iron he was able to load onto a railroad car.1 Taylor did this by promising him a raise, to be determined by management. Schmidt was eager to accept, as he had worked hard to own a small plot of land, and hoped to build a house on it. Taylor told Schmidt that he should walk, rest, and load when/as he was instructed by a manager, minimizing any inefficiencies or inconsistencies in the process of carrying the crude iron onto the train. Schmidt went from loading around 12 tons of iron to almost 48 tons per day—an increase of 400 percent. For this, his pay rose from $1.15 to $1.85—an increase of 60 percent.
Taylor’s method turned into an entire system of management focused on minimizing waste and maximizing profits, which became known as “Taylorism.”2 By breaking down every task into its smallest components, Taylorism took control away from the worker executing the task and gave it to another...
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