Consciousness and control in the factories

Consciousness and control in the factories

In consideration of how the consciousness of the worker is shaped by firms for the sake of productivity, Linda Lim details how the worker becomes individualised despite being surrounded by many co-workers.

“New values and attitudes are introduced into the multinational labour force– a competitive work ethic, encouragement of individual effort for individual monetary gain, and the propagation of a consumption ideology aimed at fostering company loyalty and generating an incentive to work for disposable income.”¹

“These may have the effect of pre-empting the development of a collective worker consciousness directed towards a reduction of exploitation, substituting instead an individualistic “feminine” consciousness which makes workers more vulnerable to exploitative labour practices by multinationals.”²

Competition against other workers for individual benefits was a strategy employed to prevent the development of class/gender consciousness. Sometimes, workers who started to buy into the perks of this competitiveness would also eventually start to clash with their own communities. Their new position as income earners gave them a sense of agency which were often scrutinised under familial structures. Linda Lim points how this agency can become an issue in their respective communities.

“While women's occupational mobility may be as restricted as their social class standing, work can change their standing within the family, and the intrinsic rewards of work can change their outlooks.”³

“Conflicts induced between workers and the community over this cultural disruption and issues of weakening village patriarchy and changing sex roles divides the local population, which may inhibit the development of a broader class consciousness”⁴

Chung Yuen Kay addresses women’s consciousness that relates to the production process. To her this is an “important site for ‘resistance’, for pushing back the frontiers of control in the workplace.” She talks about learning from experience,

“I was for all practical purposes an operator, not a researcher. And I believe that I could only have learnt what I did learn because I was an operator, and not just a researcher observing operators.”⁵

She mentions having to change her perspective on “consciousness”.

“I believe that my present understanding of women's consciousness is still a version, albeit my preferred version. There is not, after all, one ‘true’ reality, waiting to be discovered by some omniscient researcher. It is a preferred version that attempts to ‘make sense’ of the complexities of women’s lives without having to ‘make victims’ or ‘make heroes’ out of them.”⁶

Consciousness towards class or gender was also obstructed by strategies to instill a sense of rivalry among workers while also fabricating the idea of company solidarity. Linda shows examples of how prizes or incentives were meant to create competition among the operators.

“Women in different assembly lines compete with each other for the prize dinner awarded monthly to the most productive line and sometimes for nothing”⁷

The only sense of togetherness initiated would often be for the benefit of the company. Workers from the same factory would not only compete amongst each other but also against “rival” factories.

“Sometimes company solidarity is accentuated by inculcating a sense of competition with other companies in the area, which often encourages workers in one company to “snub” those of another they feel they are in rivalry with.”⁸

According to Chung Yuen Kay, supervisors would put up a chart of the daily targets of individual operators on the wall of workstations and this was “intended to exert pressure on the women to perform and perhaps compete with each other.”⁹

Again, workers were encouraged to compete with one another in a free market kind of style but companies would practice “information socialism” to prevent workers from being able to choose better conditions.

“To control ‘job hopping’ firms in some areas agreed not to hire experienced workers who resigned from one of them and then sought workers in others–a form of effective “blacklisting” of workers who sought to exercise their free labour market right to sell their labour to the highest bidder.”¹⁰

Nadia Florman also laments that factories will replace employees without hesitation. She noticed that local and Malaysian workers in her factory were being replaced by an influx of Chinese workers as Chinese workers were faster, younger and cost effective for the company. This led to internalised competition between the workers. Here is a good example of how firms are able to pit workers against each other to ensure cost and labour efficiency. Local workers who have been with the firm for long periods of time are not ensured job security as they are inevitably forced to compete against migrant workers to benefit the capital objectives of the firms.

“Aiyah you tua(old) already, you go home already, you relax”¹¹

Chung Yan Kay identifies the need for firms to control labour

Employer needs to integrate and synchronise operations, which means necessity for managers to regulate, time, control and integrate discrete aspects of work.
Worker is selling potential labour power, employer has to lay down what should be done by the worker, how often and in what manner.
Relationship between workers and employers characterised by conflict - owing to the discrepancy between cost of labour and the value of labour’s product. Class antagonism means that employers constantly seek to overcome through control.¹²

Elements that have to be controlled in relation to the purpose of control.

Employers control execution, design, distribution and speed of work in order to achieve their desired levels of efficiency.
Subjectivity, cooperation of workers, secure workers’ motivation to produce
Management cannot trust workers fully and must control the quantity and quality of output through constant supervision.¹³

Hierarchy of factory that Chung yuen Kay researched/worked in:

Managing director(male)
Senior supervisors(male)
Supervisors(all male except one female in quality control) in charge of operators(female except those carrying bulky items)
Security guards(male)
Technicians(male except one or two females)
Administrative network - clerical workers and personnel officer(female)¹⁴

Hierarchy was sometimes disguised under the term “family”. Linda Lim points out that workers were “made to feel that they belong to the company “family” in Japanese firms. American employers also adopted this attempt to make employees feel that they are part of “one big happy family”. Chung Yuen Kay also states that by using lines like “we are one big family” or “we must work as a team”, management hoped to project an image of being “open” and “egalitarian”.

Operators also often felt that the supervisor would only come in and out and ask, ‘what’s the problem?’ while the line leader, often female, had to “plan and talk to the women, do all kinds of paperwork, protest, beg them.”¹⁵ This indicates how the labour of management is also transferred to the lead operator because unlike the supervisor, she is made to do “practically everything”. Supervisors would also tend to perform “cosmetic sympathy” towards the workers to gain the trust of workers in order to get what they needed from them. The other strategy adopted by supervisors is known as the “indulgency pattern.” Supervisors would demonstrate flexibility or break certain rules in exchange for workers’ greater cooperation beyond that which was required as minimal standards. What the supervisors wanted was often to meet targets or for the workers to work overtime to increase productivity.

Productivity of operators was measured through “target”. Target could refer to the amount of drives assembled, aligned or pre-tested in a working day. Operators were also timed by supervisors. Chung Yuen Kay writes in her fieldnotes,

“Li Chiew, came to me, and said in low tones, afterwards when Kenneth comes to time your work, you do it slower than you actually can.”¹⁶

She also states that “the women shared the belief that management was never satisfied’’ Management would always raise the target when a worker showed the ability to do so. To the operators, it was therefore important for the women not to let it happen and to maintain what they considered were realistic levels of target. Operators did what they believed to be realistic and what was “owed” to the company. Because of this, there was an unspoken code that ruled that one woman should not display over-competence at work.

Besides meeting targets, operators were also often asked to do OT(overtime). Nadia Florman also speaks about how supervisors in the factories that she worked at used to ask workers to work overtime to compensate for falling rates of target. However, in contrast to the experiences of Chung Yuen Kay, operators were keen to work overtime because of monetary gain.

In one of her fieldnotes, Chung Yuen Kay mentions how the supervisor, Patrick, got upset when nobody signed up to work overtime on a public holiday and called for a meeting. One of the workers, Suraya, said cheekily, “it’s Deepavali and Devan Nair has invited me to his house. I am helping him to make tosai”¹⁷. C.V.Devan Nair served as the president of Singapore from 1981-1985.

Suraya also reminded Patrick that overtime was a favour done to him by the workers and this upset him. He in turn threatened to be more strict with enforcing the target. The operators then collectively agreed that they would meet the target but would refuse to cooperate over future demands for OT.

The process of negotiation helps the operators “to exert a degree of determination over the limits of their productivity, from keeping track of one’s own speed of work, protesting against raised targets which seem unreasonable, using the argument that the quality of their work will be compromised by excessive speed and acting against target-busters.”¹⁸

Absenteeism, for the operators, was also an avenue of exercising a degree of control over their work.

“It was part of the culture of the factory that a woman who was feeling ‘xian’(burnt out)...could legitimately(in the eyes of women, not management, who saw absenteeism as a thorny problem) take a day off work off two.”¹⁹

Perhaps this is equivalent to taking a “mental day off” today? However, this was done strategically to ensure that the two days did not fall on the same half of the month to prevent any financial penalisation.

Workers would also devise strategies to get what they wanted such as indirectly threatening to leave or “initiating” quarrels with a supervisor so they could be transferred to different stations. Sometimes operators would also make use of the knowledge that male supervisors would be smitten by certain female operators and use this to their advantage. This operator would then be tasked with asking for what was needed. By way of Chung Yuen Kay, Anna Pollert points out that the

“use of sexual politics is a form of individual social negotiation based on gender not usually available to male workers but very common for women workers who are most often subordinated to men.”²⁰

Nadia Florman recalls how supervisors would wait behind the equipment of workstations to shout at workers who went on too many toilet or cigarette breaks. Chung Yuen Kay observes that contrary to the docile image that is often imagined of the workers, certain strategies adopted to confront supervisors were as antagonistic as methods of enforcement. Having been told not to go to the toilet, one particular operator intentionally walked around aimlessly and even challenged the supervisor by exclaiming that she was going for her break. Shouting matches would also sometimes ensue. One operator Yen Lan told Chung Yuen Kay that shouting back was a solution sometimes as the supervisor would not know how to react.

“All you have to do is to shout louder than him and he would be scared”²¹

There was also a difference in how male and female workers were treated. Female workers would often be terminated or threatened with warning letters while male workers who would retaliate were often less antagonised with threats. Retaliation in the form of physical violence was to be handled carefully. This however did not mean that female workers did not fight back. Female workers did so through different strategies that were feasible to them. Often operators would find ways to exist in a functional space between refusal and cooperation with management. This enabled them to view their position as one beyond the role of “oppressed victims”.

Chung Yuen Kay recalls how she did not understand why workers were able to be jovial despite being “oppressed”. This led to her questioning misperceptions she had developed through theoretical impositions.

“A funny thing happened. On my way to the lunchroom before making for the bus-stop. A group of operators, none I recognise, was heading for the same direction, all laughing, chatting, in good spirits. At the door, they forged ahead of me, and I was forced to let them pass. I sort of glared at their retreating backs and feeling this sudden well of resentment, thought, very reasonably, how can you be so happy? What’s so great about your life? You should be feeling oppressed! Felt immediately remorseful and ashamed tho!”²²

“Who the hell was I to go round telling other women what they should feel?”²³

_{1-4. Lim, Linda. Women Workers in Multinational Corporations. 1978.
5-6. Chung, Yuen Kay. Negotiating Target. 1 Jan. 1988.

7-8. Lim, Linda. Women Workers in Multinational Corporations. 1978.

9. Chung, Yuen Kay. Negotiating Target. 1 Jan. 1988.
10. Lim, Linda. Women Workers in Multinational Corporations. 1978.

11. Interview with Nadia Florman conducted by Shaza Ishak, 2025.
12-23. Chung, Yuen Kay. Negotiating Target. 1 Jan. 1988.}