What negative effects did the assembly line have?

Answer 1

One negative effect would be the loss of trade skills among the workforce. For instance, if one man knows hows to build a car from start to finish, he has a complete trade skill. However, in an assembly line, each line worker focuses entirely on only one aspect of the trade, perhaps shaping a bumper or installing a door, etc. If the line worker should lose their job and then seek employment, the only skill they would have would be the one they did on the line, rather than having a complete trade skill. This can severely limit job opportunities when searching through the job market. Another negative effect is the potential for decrease in pay among workers. This can result because the individual worker is not as "valuable" as they would have been prior to the assembly line. The amount of training per worker is limited to the one task that they are responsible for on the line. Training a worker to buff a chrome bumper would take considerably less time that training the worker the entire process of building a car. Less energy goes into training and therefore less value can be placed on the worker, and thus, pay can be reduced. Another worker can take their place and be up and running very quickly. From an "artistic" point of view, the assembly line diminishes the presence of a craftsman's "personal touch." In an assembly line, their is no room for workers to branch off on their own and change something in the designs. The assembly line runs based on interchangable parts and sticking to one specific design. If each worker added their own style and technique to a line product, it would most likely start to no longer connect properly with future parts down the line. An individual craftsman has their own set of unique skills and style, and since they are building something based on their own personal bias, it can come out as a "work of art," rather than a mass produced clone of a specific design.