Reminds me of a story I heard a while back, about a factory town back in the day where the management would adjust the town clock to make it run slower during the work day, and faster overnight, in order to squeeze more labor out of the poor workers. Can't find anything about it on Google, but it's conceivable.
Jenny Odell (the person interviewed here) actually references that in her latest, Saving Time. Alas, I already returned the copy to the library, but her references are thorough so it’s bound to be in there.
yeah so, nobody who worked at the factory as a poor worker ever moved up and learned about it and thought man I won't stand for this.
nobody who was affected by this was friends with whoever put the clock back.
the clock being put back was known by the town government, obviously in the pocket of the factory owners because factory town but still, lots of people knowing about something who do not directly benefit didn't let slip, nobody did anything.
even though factory town surely some non-factory owned small businesses in town, nobody noticed this patter.
The management and government of the the town were totally ok with getting up earlier than they had to and going to work longer than they needed to so that the workers didn't notice hey those guys get off work before I do - I realize factory worker may work longer than bosses but probably not that much if -
the company NEEDED to put the time back, because if it was long enough ago they didn't need to put time back because then you could say hey you will work 13 hours and like it.
During the gilded age you didn't need subterfuge to make people work too many hours in a day, you ordered them to, you would only need subterfuge during an age with worker protections.
With worker protections would you really try to do that.
How much time did the business gain? It should be significant to be worht the risk of doing it.
What part of the country was this, not one where it gets dark early in winter then I guess, or people would notice.
In short - extensive documentation required to believe it even though I don't trust any company not to do it if it really was to their benefit and if they could get away with it.
I mean conversely when people working for company towns attempted to strike in the 1800s, the companies just hired groups like the Pinkertons to come kill them. That is something that is very well documented.
The above story about passive theft sounds complicated, but not impossible, but why do that when companies were fine with actively just screwing everyone over at the point of a gun already?
exactly one of my points - the whole being sneaky about screwing you over is coming from a position of weakness, so when you're weak you don't risk that stuff, but when you're strong you just demand what you want.
So I would like some corroboration because it just does not sound reasonable that it would happen, or if it did that happen that it wouldn't have real negative consequences for the company.
thinking about this I can think of one situation where it would make sense, since the company doing this would be coming from a position of weakness (if strong you just demand people work however long you like) but if weak it would imply they wouldn't try it, perhaps they were not very long ago strong.
If for example they were able to demand longer hours worked, and then regulations were enacted and they could not do that, making them weak where they were previously strong, they might react by trying to sneakily get what they see as their rights.
All that said, still very unlikely scenario, and still needs more than ooh I read a story, it needs town name, company name years it happened and a place to look up the data for a claim so unlikely and conspiratorial.
Jenny Odell did a talk for the Long Now org back in March. I found it interesting. The first half-hour is her presenting and the second half-hour is Q&A.
