“the England of arterial and by-pass roads, of filling stations and factories that look like exhibition buildings, of giant cinemas and dance-halls and cafes, bungalows with tiny garages, cocktail bars, Woolworths, motor-coaches, wireless, hiking, factory girls looking like actresses, greyhound racing and dirt tracks, swimming pools, and everything given away for cigarette coupons.”

Priestley, 1984 [1934]: 375

These factory girls were an object of concern and scrutiny, troubling the established categories of class with their outspoken, performed femininity. A new, light, industrial labour force destabilised the established understandings of gender and class. The Bata factory in East Tilbury was staffed, in part, by this kind of woman: making shoes in order to pay for new shoes and handbags and lipsticks. And to keep their families: women’s work is not all about pin money and frivolity, J. B..

There are, or have been, Bata factories all over the world, making shoes for Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, as well as the Czechs. Haresh Khanna, the shoemaker-suitor of Lata Mehra in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy has Bata at the top of his list of preferred employers “I’ve been trying Bata and James Hawley and Praha and Flex and Cooper Allen” (2003: 620). Haresh eventually negotiates his way to taking a supervisor’s position with the efficient Czechs, and stands out from fellow Indian employees by moving into the compound with the ‘Prahamen’ in ‘Prahapore’, pseudonyms for the real Batanagar. In 1932, Bata arrived in East Tilbury, UK (and in the 1940s in Maryport, Cumbria), down at the bottom end of the Essex coast, the dirty part, near where the Thames spews out.

Bata built a new, modern factory, and a new, modern town around it. It brought Czech managers, men, and their families from HQ in Zlin, and recruited local women and men to work the production lines. East European migration isn’t such a new thing. The company wanted a productive workforce, and a productive workforce must be happy. Neat and modern boxes for living in were built, along with leisure facilities – including a swimming pool – a hotel, a bar a grocers and a post office, as in Zlin. Everything you might need, designed for the future.

There are echoes of those nineteenth century paternalists, Cadbury, Salt and Lever, and their company towns, Bournville, Saltaire and Port Sunlight. But with a difference that reflects the mid twentieth century’s “second spirit of capitalism” (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007), where the gambling of the bourgeois entrepreneur gave way to mass production, mass consumption and massive organisation. Management understanding of the benefits of rationality and planning mark the building of the Bata factories and company towns. And what felt like institutional benevolence for those in charge seemed to have a sound footing in science and logic.

The second spirit drew on techniques of scientific management, developed by F W Taylor, and the Gilbreths, amongst others. Workers were measured and assessed to design productivity improvements through rationalising work activity, or replacing human with machine. The production line, with work divided into discrete tasks, is one legacy of this. However, as Eva Illouz argues, rationality was not all-conquering. The new sciences of the emotions, psychology in particular, gave rise to techniques of emotional capitalism. Elton Mayo for example brought the techniques and presumptions of therapy into management. The good manager would listen to his workers, would pay attention to how they felt (Illouz, 2007: 13–15). Bata had vision and ideals. “Friends and fellow workers” said founder Thomas Bata in one of his Mayday speeches…the contemporary equivalent is ‘we’re all in this together’.

So the difference between Saltaire and East Tilbury is not merely in the contrast between brick houses and a Yorkshire stone factory on the one hand, and the square white boxes of East Tilbury’s working and living spaces, but in the understandings of production, work and life that were presumed. Salt’s employees worshipped in the church he built, and it’s not certain whether god or Salt seemed the most powerful. Bata’s employees were freer, to swim in the pool, and to send their children to scout groups. Forward looking international companies in the 1930s managed with science, offering rationalised work and sensible leisure, rather than direct command and control. Scientific management met emotional capitalism. “Work together, live separately” was one of the Bata family slogans, but living in the company town wasn’t such a separation.

East Tilbury Bata was the temporary HQ of the operation during the second world war, and it made boots for soldiers for this time. Production for the domestic market resumed after the war, and generations of Essex girls and boys worked there. Production continued in East Tilbury until 2005, when the factory was closed (Maryport had gone in the 1980s). Now only one of the twenty Bata ‘production units’ are in Europe (8 in Asia-Pacific, 7 in Africa and 4 in Latin America, see www.bata.com. So, like other company towns founded in era of the ‘third England’, the factory building is decaying and some of the houses – still lived in – are starting to bear witness to the long term unemployment or underemployment that can mean a paint job is out of the question. Of Essex’s modernist legacy, these places of work have come off worse than the genteel, expensive houses of Frinton, or the curved splendour of the Labworth Cafe, Canvey Island (Rose, 2012).

Bataville: we are not afraid of the future is an documentary made of an art project by Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope around 2004, just as East Tilbury Bata was on its last legs. Former workers from Maryport and East Tilbury, and a group of ‘others’, travelled by coach through Europe to Zlin, the birthplace of Bata (now based in Bermuda…how times change). They stop in the Netherlands Bata, to see how robots replaced people, and then onto ‘Bataville’ to have a look round.

In the Netherlands, some of the passengers were tearful. These machines, “wonderful to watch”, have replaced people, people who had skills, who prided themselves that they could go “right down the whole shoe”, not just stick on the sole. And of course,” you can’t have a conversation with a robot.” So despite the pace of the line, where a shoe would pass you every 6 seconds and you had to do your operation on it, there was something that felt good in the work.

I liked this film. I liked the planning the artists had done to get the groups of strangers to talk to each other by asking each to provide some entertainment for the long coach. Some told stories about their working lives, now over, others played games or got everyone to make something, and some talked about the things they loved. I liked one of the artists talking about her worries that the people they took on the bus were left behind in plans for regeneration of post-industrial areas like East Tilbury.

The world we live in is one where production is subcontracted by branded firms, one where cheap goods are made by low paid workers, and where all kinds of footloose manufacturing industries leave unemployment behind. We see in Bataville the long historical roots of how the local is captured by the global. Bata might still be the company that counts in Zlin, but its experiments in work-life omnipotence in the UK didn’t hold out against individualised globalised capitalism. The ongoing ruination is not beautiful decay, but an emblem of post-industrial Essex, where the only jobs left for lipsticked would-be stars are not those of making something, but those of selling something.

This is a revised version of a talk I gave to introduce a screening of Bata-ville, at Manchester Metropolitan University on 26th January 2012. The event was organised by Morag Rose, on behalf of The LRM and the Manchester Modernist Society, in conjunction with Manchester Metropolitan University. Thanks to all involved, especially Morag.

References

1. (2006) Bata-ville: We are not afraid of the future A Somewhere project by Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie, developed by Commissions East.
2. Boltanski, L. and Chiapello, E. (2007) The New Spirit of Capitalism. Verso, London, trans Gregory Elliot.
3. Illouz, E. (2007) Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Polity Press, London.
4. Priestley, J. B. (1984[1934]) English Journey, Penguin Books.
5. Rose, M (2012) ‘The Modernists’ Guide to Essex’, The Modernist, issue 3.
6. Seth, V (2003 [1993]) A Suitable Boy. Phoenix Books, London.

George Perec’s The Art and Craft of Approaching your Head of Department to Submit A RequestFor A Raise tells the tale of a man’s decision and indecision as he worries and wonders and wanders around his office looking for the right time and the right way to ask Mr X for a pay raise. He visits Ms Wye at times. He pays attention to what was on the cafeteria menu. He hopes Mr X’s daughters are well and don’t have measles. He circumperambulates the office waiting for the right moment. This comes at “the two hundred and fifty-fifth bid” (2011:79) and it isn’t an instant success.

What I love about this piece is how all those moments of uncertainty that make up organisational life, all the things that go through your mind when you’re at work but not working, the posturing and the wondering and the positioning are brought into a formula of no/yes, 0/1, recursion and slight development. The book’s about the systems that lie within the messiness of living and working. It is prefaced and inspired by a flowchart illustrating computerised decision making produced by Perec’s fellow Oulipian, Jacques Perriaud. Perec makes ‘real’ the grey media of the flowchart adding the uncertainties, false steps and coincidences that make up a working life. Almost real: it’s a story with just one full stop.

Play the game yourself theartofaskingyourbossforaraise.com

Reference

1. Perec, G (2011) The Art and Craft of Approaching your Head of Department to Submit A Request For A Raise, trans David Bellos. London: Vintage Books.

Carly was appointed to do eyelash extensions and was trained to do this at college. She has since been taught to thread by her Beauty Plus colleagues: there just weren’t enough takers for the extensions to keep her busy. She learned waxing during her NVQ, an altogether more brutal and messy hair removal technique. The shift to threading doesn’t come easily to her– as Ingold says, part of skill is the “coupling of perception and action” (2011; 53), and Carly can’t help but to stop and think. Whilst the other women who do the threading are employed because of their ethnicity — they learned to thread as a matter of course, as part of being a girl with Indian heritage — Carly is employed despite her ethnicity. She has her qualifications but few of the skills of her colleagues.  It’s been a few months since I saw her working there.

Reference

Ingold, T (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London and New York: Routledge.

It is not surprising then that companies spend a lot of money on sales techniques training programmes for their employees; personally, I have been in a couple of those seminars and workshops. They’ll tell you that, usually, a meeting with a customer could last up to 1 hour (rarely two), and a well-trained sales person would know what to do to take advantage of every minute. For now, let’s talk about the first seconds.

Imagine for a moment that you are the sales representative. It is extremely important to make a good first-impression in order to have a successful meeting with a customer. Usually, you only have 30 seconds to do it; that is, the time it takes to walk from the door to the customer’s desk and shake his/her hand.

source: http://www.soyentrepreneur.com/reglas-de-protocolo-para-vender.html

But even before entering the office a quick check is required: are your shoes clean? Is your forehead sweating? What about your breath? All these are signals sent to the customer; thus, avoiding use the wrong ones is a good start.

You’re standing in front of the customer. A bit of emotional management is required here, take a deep breath, or do anything that prevents you from revealing signs of stress like sweaty hands, redness on your face or neck, touching your hair excessively (mainly women), among others. The aim of every sales representative is to look confident. Though you might find it difficult, depending on the situation.

Now, how to use your hands? There are different kinds of handshakes.

The informal is more often used with friends or acquaintances, it could be too strong or too soft and might include kissing; this should be avoided with a customer because it reflects low levels of formality. The political is a handshake that shows a certain level of intimacy and “caring”. It requires both hands, your right hand shakes the right hand of the other person, and your left hand is positioned either over the other person’s right hand, or on his/her shoulder; this could be used with a customer but not on a first appointment. The professional is the most commonly used on business meetings, it reflects high levels of formality and confidence; it requires eye contact, a smile on your face, a firm handshake (not too strong) and, when this is a first appointment, you must say your name and professional position while holding the other person’s hand, this increases the attention levels.

Of course, cultural differences should be considered for an international environment. If, however, you have no intentions to become a sales representative, and already kind of knew all this information, it is always good to remember the tacit knowledge that is hidden in your mind.

May this be a proof that not only factory workers require specialised hand-skills.

At a house-building site, the kettle was abandoned, as was the empty bottle of that Scottish staple, Irn Bru. Work is powered by hot and cold sugary drinks.

Domestic appliances and accoutrements helped my carpenter-friend’s work A hot iron made stikcing things together much easier; cling film over the paint tray stopped it skinning over whilst he took a tea break, and dishclothes wiped up the spills and splashes of paint and varnish.

In these three male worlds of paid work, there existed small moments of domesticity.

According to Williams, the Isotype charts used in the book are ‘not introduced for decoration, though their colours do certainly enliven the page’. She continues: ‘if you look at them with attention you will find that they suggest all sorts of relationships between different bits of our complex society that probably would not jump so vividly into your mind simply from looking at rows of figures or reading descriptions of facts’ (1945: 10). Visual sociology in a nutshell!

The charts that stuck me most were two entitled, ‘The Changing Home’. The first, immediately below, represents a pre-industrial world in which the home is centre-stage. With the establishment of schools, and the extension of production including food production beyond the home and for more than subsistence needs, there is an overlap in what takes place ‘Inside the Home’ and ‘Outside the Home’ by the ‘19th Century’.

In the second chart (below), the first half is devoted to ‘Today’ (as in 1945). There is a strict and persistent gendered division of labour and recognition of work performed in different socio-economic modes and spatial contexts inside and outside the home: childcare and education, cooking and baking, laundry, making clothes, and food production. What is especially fascinating is Williams’ exploratory representation of ‘The future?’ (in the second half of the chart below) imagined in a context of the scarcity of workers (1945: 110–111). It shows an ever-increasing shift to all activities (except cleaning) taking place outside of the home, with men and women equally positioned in the public sphere. We might also read her chart to imply that the vacuum cleaner is an autonomous object, the agent as well as the instrument of its work!

What we now know is that there are many combinations of the activities in Williams’ charts taking place as paid or unpaid work inside or outside of the home, as formal employment or as informal activities undertaken by friends, family or voluntary workers (Glucksmann, 1995, 2005). Perhaps what Williams didn’t fully anticipate was the complexity and variety of these relations — or the ongoing gender segregation in who does what, wherever it takes place.

References
1. Glucksmann, M. (2005). ‘Shifting boundaries and interconnections: extending the “total social organisation of labour”’, in L. Pettinger, J. Parry, R.F. Taylor and M. Glucksmann (editors) A New Sociology of Work? Oxford and Malden, MA.: Blackwell Publishing/The Sociological Review.
2. Glucksmann, M. (1995). ‘Why “Work”? Gender and the “Total Social Organisation of Labour”’, Gender, Work and Organization 2(2): 63–75.
3. Williams, G. (1945) Women and Work, London: Nicholson and Watson.

As the day has gone on, I’ve been struck all the more by what a considerate, even ethical gesture this was. If the sale had been completed – the country clothing dispatched and my account debited – and I had realised this some days later, I think the bank would have taken the hit, so there was no purely economic need for the kind saleswoman to look any further. It suggests an empathy with the customer, and pride in the job, bound up with a business practice that rests on a notion of just exchange rather than profit maximisation at any cost.

As soon as the conversation with the country clothing company is over, I call my bank. They cancel my card and the fraudulent transaction. A couple of hours later, I get a security alert from them. They have blocked another payment – genuinely my expenditure this time – so I try to get it reinstated. It was to a large, corporate online photo service and I’m keen to avoid uploading my photos again. The bank refuse to sort this out, constrained by their own irrevocable decisions. The large bureaucracy deals only in absolutes and the unfortunate person on the other end of the line has no autonomy to act in this situation, even in the face of its own stupidity.

I call the photo company, explaining the sequence of events to at least two different people (there are different departments for photobooks, canvases, and prints…). Eventually, a woman says: But your order was dispatched yesterday. Oh, I reply, so what do I do about the payment that’s been blocked? We’re not able to take payments over the phone, she responds, we don’t even have a machine for it! There is a short pause: You know what, just forget it, she continues. She’s actually telling me not to settle my account. It’s for a small amount after all we both agree, and well, someone can always chase me later, if they even trace what’s happened, she laughingly comments.

The organisation that’s evoked in this last exchange is, like the bank, a rigid, bureaucratic and mindless machine. There is no identification with the company on the part of the saleswoman, and no concern for doing the right thing in line with a particular business practice. Unlike in the bank however, the worker sidesteps the bureaucratic impasse in the interests of the customer, leaving the lumbering market to figure out its own inconsistencies – as the clothing company worker does but in a very different spirit. The photo company worker may have a disregard for the company – disaffection perhaps – but this is not extended to the customer. I get the feeling that she is putting herself in my place, and making a level-headed judgment call. She might be motivated by the satisfaction of being helpful or simply know that it’s best not to try and fight the insurmountable failings of the system. Still, it’s a win-win scenario for us both.

What all this shows however is the different extremes under which workers (except for those employed by my bank it seems) exercise autonomy and demonstrate empathy – both in a small personalised business and a giant faceless corporation. Using their intuition and judgement based on the information at hand, and going beyond what that information literally tells them to make better sense of the situation, they find a resolutely human way to make a living.

1

2

* and so I admit they were not ‘seasonal workers’, properly defined, being employed by the security firms for other events; I used the term ‘seasonal work’ to make the point that many work tasks are not jobs for life.

** a non-commercialised version of Halloween, and (more devilishly) Mischief Night goes way back to a time before fancy dress shops were around to hire out sexy Zombie costumes.

The car is the “quintessential manufactured object” (Urry, 2006: 17), and its production the object of some curiosity, whether from Goldthorpe, et. al. (1968) wondering what these affluent workers were like, or from Durand and Hatzfeld (2003), what working on the Peugeot line was like. The road on which the car’s success rests so heavily is less fascinating, existing as a frustration for the traveller and a taken-for granted by researchers. There needs to be more gratitude for this work, and more attention to the affordances offered by roads. They make possible being a tourist in the Trossachs, and getting to work in one Highland village from home in another. The kinds of roads that exist in rural places don’t have the promise and frustrations of the motorway or the by-pass: they don’t carry as much traffic, and they don’t have traffic lights and roundabouts, just passing places and warning signs. They make hills manageable.

In contemporary accounts of movement and change in social life, the way movement relies on the fixity and certainty of the road beneath our tyres is not much thought of (see Sheller, 2004). In the city, tarmac is taken for granted. Joe Moran’s On Roads tells us about the politics of road building, and the organisation of road systems, but tells us little about road work as part of the everyday (though its lovely to hear how road bases are formed from the detritus of industrial life: broken up tarmac from elsewhere, or crushed Robbie Williams cds (Moran, 2010: 256).)

The Pochain digger sits up high on a pile of gravel, with its own tracks visible on the leftover gravel, though not on the smoothed out road surface it will leave behind. It sits above the mountains, having opened them up to drivers. It’s been parked for a while as, though the road it built is finished, it’s no easy matter to get it back down the mountain. The rainy Highlands weather is taming the machinery, rusting it up.

References

1. Durand, J. P. and Hatzfeld, N. (2003) Living Labour: Life on the Line at Peugeot France Palgrave Macmillan.
2. Goldthorpe, J.H., Lockwood, D., Bechhofer, F., and Platt, J. (1968a) The Affluent Worker: Industrial Attitudes and Behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Moran, J. (2010) On Roads: A Hidden History. Profile Books, London.
4. Sheller, M. (2004) ‘Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car’. Theory, Culture & Society. vol. 21 no. 4–5 221–242.
5. Urry, J. (2006) ‘Inhabiting the Car’. The Sociological Review. Volume 54, Issue Supplement s1, pp 17–31.
6. Richard Wilson/Jonney Steven Britain’s Best Drives, BBC4, October 25th 2011.
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