Ironically, scientific management produced
the opposite of what Taylor expected by helping
to accelerate and legitimate the deskilling of
workers (Braverman 1974). It also strengthened
the hands of managers to continuously drive
down piece rates as they pushed productivity requirements
higher. These dynamics intensified
workers’ strikes in the early twentieth century,
and organizational conflict resolution became
the province of private strikebreakers, policing
agencies, and the U.S. military, all of which led
to congressional investigations at which Taylor
testified (Montgomery 1979).During this same
period, American courts issued 2965 major injunctions
against local union leaders, effectively
outlawing strikes (Friedman 2002, p. 76).