Views On Labor
Ferdinand visited Henry Ford's operation in Detroit many times where he learned the importance of productivity. There he learned to monitor work. The need to increase productivity became an obsession for him. Conventional methods for increasing productivity include longer working hours, a faster rate of work, and new labour-saving techniques. Under Adolf Hitler, German workers enjoyed full employment, but historian William L. Shirer says this came at a cost of serfdom like qualities and poverty wages. The Volkswagen plant was completed in 1938 after Italian Labor was brought in. This workforce can be considered exploitative, but people were exhorted to follow this example. Although Porsche joined the Nazi party on his own free will in 1937, and was an SS activist, he did not have any "blood on his hands." Even so, Volkswagen, under Ferdinand Porsche, profited from forced and slave labor. This would include a large number of Soviets. In the spring of 1945, 90% of Volkswagen’s workforce was non-German
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Famous quotes containing the words views and/or labor:
“Views of women, on one side, as inwardly directed toward home and family and notions of men, on the other, as outwardly striving toward fame and fortune have resounded throughout literature and in the texts of history, biology, and psychology until they seem uncontestable. Such dichotomous views defy the complexities of individuals and stifle the potential for people to reveal different dimensions of themselves in various settings.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)