During the 1920s, most advocates of scientific management, Frederick Taylor’s method for maximizing workers’ productivity by rigorously routinizing their jobs, opposed the five-day workweek. Although scientific managers conceded that reducing hours might provide an incentive to workers, in practice they more often used pay differentials to encourage higher productivity. Those reformers who wished to embrace both scientific management and reduced hours had to make a largely negative case, portraying the latter as an antidote to the rigors of the former.
In contrast to the scientific managers, Henry Ford claimed that shorter hours led to greater productivity and profits. However, few employers matched either Ford’s vision or his specific interest in mass marketing a product — automobiles — that required leisure for its use, and few unions succeeded in securing shorter hours through bar gaining. At its 1928 convention, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) boasted of approximately 165,000 members working five-day, 40-hour weeks. But although this represented an increase of about 75,000 since 1926, about 70 percent of the total came from five extremely well-organized building trades’ unions.
The passage is primarily concerned with discussing which of the following?
A) The relative merits of two points of view regarding a controversy
B) The potential benefits to workers in the 1920s of a change in employers’ policies
C) The reasons for a labor-management disagreement during the 1920s
D) The status of a contested labor issue during the 1920s
E) The role of labor unions in bringing about a reform
It can be inferred that the author of the passage mentions “automobiles” primarily to suggest that
A) Ford’s business produced greater profits than did businesses requiring a workweek longer than five days
B) Ford, unlike most other employers, encouraged his employees to use the products they produced
C) Ford may have advocated shorter hours because of the particular nature of his business
D) unions were more likely to negotiate for shorter hours in some businesses than in others
E) automobile workers’ unions were more effective than other unions in securing a five-day workweek
It can be inferred that the author of the passage would probably agree with which of the following claims about the boast referred to in lines
underlined ?
A) It is based on a mistaken estimation of the number of AFL workers who were allowed to work a five-day, 40-hour week in 1928.
B) It could create a mistaken impression regarding the number of unions obtaining a five-day, 40-hour week during the 1920s.
C) It exaggerates the extent of the increase between 1926 and 1928 in AFL members working a five-day, 40-hour week.
D) It overestimates the bargaining prowess of the AFL building trades’ unions during the 1920s.
E) It is based on an overestimation of the number of union members in the AFL in 1928.
According to the passage, the “reformers” claimed that
A) neither scientific management nor reduced hours would result in an improvement in the working conditions of most workers
B) the impact that the routinization of work had on workers could be mitigated by a reduction in the length of their workweek
C) there was an inherent tension between the principles of scientific management and a commitment to reduced workweeks
D) scientific managers were more likely than other managers to use pay differentials to encourage higher productivity
E) reducing the length of the workweek would increase productivity more effectively than would increases in pay
19 Oct 2016, 06:48
36% (02:55) correct
