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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

I once visited the Fremont factory for a week and was required to do safety training. The person went on about how the training is only in English and you must know English to complete it. He had everyone say hi and something about themselves and about 1/3 didn’t speak any English. He just decided to keep going anyways and everyone completed safety training.

I’m not sure how typical that is in the industry. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s totally normal.

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During the early 19th Century Ford paid for mandatory language lessons, to make cheaper immigrant labour viable in his plant. (he was remarkably "socialist" at times, for an avowed racist nazi-supporting anti-unionist providing high quality housing and out-bidding his competitors on wages. Strange man.)

During the worst periods of South African apartheid, the mining industry had it's own lingua franca which it taught all migrant workers coming into the deep mines.

They just spoke Afrikaans; still common to the mines/rural jobs today, regardless of genetics.

Odd. I have a history book I can't lay my hands on right now (books in storage) which said there was a mining jargon for the Swahili, Xhosa, Sesotho and Swazi workers they all had to learn. It's called Fanakalo. Apparently its like a pidgin with a lot of Bantu.

But if you say they gave up and just used Africaans I can believe it.

https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/fanakalo-language-minin...

How was Ford socialist, in this example or elsewhere?

He paid living wage, provided affordable safe housing and had (for the time) racially diverse hiring (as long as you weren't Jewish I guess). He certainly wasn't in favour of organised labour, collective ownership of the means of production, or anything remotely approaching democratic socialism. My language was to outcome not belief. "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work" was a banner slogan he got behind to defeat his competitors. Of course with his obsessional belief in time and motion study (Taylorism) what he thought was fair, was completely inhumane.

He refused to recognise unions & collective bargaining for decades. He was a complete scumbag, personally as far as I'm concerned. But paying high, employing black workers and immigrants, and fixing housing isn't bad.

Nazi is literally short for National Socialist

OSHA asleep at the wheel?

That's alright, they got full self driving

Must be in a WayMo then.

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