Our corporations and administrations are dominated by a clique of people who, because they are symbolically interested, "give 100%" and expect others to do the same.
We can speak of a social class in charge of organizing work:
"Capital chooses a management team to represent it on the spot [in the corporations. Executives are meant] to supervise and organize the labors of the working population" (Harry Braverman USA, 1974, p. 405)
For Braverman, the people who really count in this team are those whose managerial positions offer them "a share in the surplus produced in the corporation, and thus is intended to attach them to the success or failure of the corporation and give them a ‘management stake’, even if a small one." (pp.405–6, original emphasis)
Today in Labor History June 15, 1914: Westinghouse strike, Pittsburgh. The Allegheny Congenial Industrial Union (ACIU) struck against Westinghouse. They were demanding union recognition and protesting against the "scientific management" theories of Frederick Taylor. They also wanted an eight-hour day, reinstatement of fired workers, and higher overtime and holiday rates. Women played a major role in the strike and many of the striking workers were women. Bridget Kenny organized marches and recruited workers to join the ACIU and rose to become one of the main spokespeople for the union. She had been employed by Westinghouse but fired in 1913 for selling union benefit tickets on company grounds. The Pittsburgh Leader, one of the city’s newspapers and one that hired numerous women writers, including Willa Cather, nicknamed Kenny “Joan de Arc.” And the women in this strike provided some of the inspiration for the workingwomen characters in Willa Cather’s short fiction. The Westinghouse plant on Edgewood Avenue was one of three they possessed in the Pittsburgh region, and one of the main sights of strike activity. In late June, the company used armed thugs to intimidate the workers, leading to a violent exchange in which several workers, and the East Pittsburgh police chief, were injured.
Today in Labor History May 15, 1917: The Library Employees’ Union was founded in New York City. It was the first union of public library workers in the United States. One of their main goals was to elevate the low status of women library workers and their miserable salaries. Maud Malone (1873-1951) was a founding member of the union. She was also a militant suffragist and an infamous heckler at presidential campaign speeches.