For me, one of the most thought-provoking expressions of the perspective of the factory worker came from the Studs Terkel book, Working, where he interviewed a factory worker and UAW local president named Gary Bryner in the early 1970s or late 1960s. Bryner:
"In that little book of quotes I have: 'The workingman has but one thing to sell, his labor. Once he loses control of that, he loses everything.'" ...
"They use time, stopwatches. They say ... We know it takes so many seconds to shoot a screw. We know the gun turns so fast, the screw's so long, the hole's so deep. Our argument has always been: That's mechanical; that's not human."
"The workers said, We perspire, we sweat, we have hangovers, we have upset stomachs, we have feelings and emotions, and we're not about to be placed in a category of a machine. When you talk about that watch, you talk about it for a minute. We talk about a lifetime. We're gonna do what's normal and we're gonna tell you what's normal. We'll negotiate from there. ..."
"If the guys didn't stand up and fight, they'd become robots too. They're interested in being able to smoke a cigarette, bullshit a little bit with the guy next to 'em, open a book, look at something, just daydream if nothing else. You can't do that if you become a machine. / Thirty-five, thirty-six seconds to do your job - that includes the walking, the picking up of the parts, the assembly. Go to the next job, with never a letup, never a second to stand and think. The guys at our plant fought like hell to keep that right."
...
I'm not sure how much factory work is still like that, but imagine if that was your job today ... or for 8 hours per day, for the rest of your life.