“The holy grail, for management, is to scab a UPS strike,” said Charles Richardson, a researcher who has analyzed UPS on behalf of the union. Richardson argues that the technological leap forward at UPS is really about “stealing knowledge” and making smart machinery that can be operated by not-so-smart scabs. Currently, work at UPS is too complicated and time-sensitive to use scab labor. Thus, during the 1997 strike the company shut down operations rather than hire replacement workers.
That is from this Christian Parenti article on workplace surveillance. I have wondered whether the high tech, autopilot language “teaching” software we have is designed for a university which increasingly replaces professors with lower skilled contingent faculty. Perhaps it has actually been created so that universities can scab T.A. strikes!
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Saw the movie, The assassination of Richard Nixon last night.
Social control can often bring out the worst in people (although not often enough in the form of true revolutionary spirit.)
I will have to see it. Did you see it in a theatre or on video/dvd?
I see Harry Braverman’s theory of deskilling and proletarianisation is still as relevant as ever. The one critique of his classic work, Labour and Monopoly Capital, is he didn’t really take resistance into account. Clearly though, where workplaces are militant and do resist the predations of the boss class, they are a prime target for measures aimed at deskilling.
Terror-vision.
Terror-vision, I like that.
Braverman, now I’ve learned about someone I should know!