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Fix the machine, not the person (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

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The General Motors plant in Fremont was a disaster. “Everything was a fight,” the head of the union admits. “They spent more time on grievances and on things like that than they did on producing cars. They had strikes all the time. It was just chaos constantly. … It was considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States.” “One of the expressions was, you can buy anything you want in the GM plant in Fremont,” adds Jeffrey Liker, a professor who studied the plant. “If you want sex, if you want drugs, if you want alcohol, it’s there. During breaks, during lunch time, if you want to gamble illegally—any illegal activity was available for the asking within that plant.” Absenteeism was so bad that some mornings they didn’t have enough employees to start the assembly line; they had to go across the street and drag people out of the bar. When management tried to punish workers, workers tried to punish them right back: scratching cars, loosening parts in hard-to-reac

Fix the machine, not the person (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought) Raw Thought by Aaron Swartz Fix the machine, not the person This post is part seven of the series Raw Nerve . The General Motors plant in Fremont was a disaster. “Everything was a fight,” the head of the union admits. “They spent more time on grievances and on things like that than they did on producing cars. They had strikes all the time. It was just chaos constantly. … It was considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States.” “One of the expressions was, you can buy

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