neo-Taylorism

This is also referred to as digital Taylorism or new Taylorism.  The American engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) came up with a method of industrial management in which each task was broken down into its simplest elements and each worker was given one of those elements to learn and perform.  This meant that no longer did you have a skilled worker who knew the whole task but instead you had a number of unskilled workers used like robots or machines to complete one bit of the task.  These unskilled workers cost less and were easier to replace.  This is the principle behind the MacDonalds system of work.

The new version of this adds technology to the supervision of the workers so that each task is given a completion time and the worker is monitored in the performance of the task to make sure that they are working to their greatest capacity.  The rebellion against this style of supervision was in part the cause of the strike of the workers in the Woolworths warehouses.  They were subjected to this form of efficiency management with workers who fell short of the standards imposed being given remedial training.  If, after that, they still failed in the system they were fired.