WORKING FROM HOME DURING THE PANDEMIC
HOME IS WHERE WORK IS
It used to be the norm to work from home in the workshop or on the farm. The daily commute is a relatively new invention - one that has been in question since the pandemic.
The toughest corona side effect is probably the home office. Hardly any side effect of the virus has been debated, analysed, parodied and now also accounted for in this way. Everyone is now familiar with Zoom, Slack, Facetime and Teams, or at least has heard of these video conferencing services. Sociologists, psychologists, physicians, employment lawyers and physiotherapists have a new object of investigation thanks to the home office.
According to your surveys, the home office society is now divided into: the tired, the hybrid and the enthusiastic. Three quarters of the employees have gotten used to the autonomy they have gained and would like to be able to decide where they work flexibly, only 29 percent want to go back to the office completely. Older people prefer the home office - because they are usually established and therefore less dependent on social contacts. Younger people tend to reject it - because they fear for their careers, because their absence could make them more likely to be ignored. Commuters, on the other hand, have learned to appreciate not having to be constantly on the move.
With all the debates about the home office, one might think that working from home is a 21st century phenomenon. But it is not. Rather, earning a living at the kitchen table is part of the history of civilization and was the norm for centuries. Since antiquity, craftsmen have had their workshops under their own roof and merchants have had their shops.
Even those who lugged their work and goods through medieval and modern Europe in carts and covered wagons were always at home with their trade. In addition to sleeping quarters and cooking utensils, the wagons also contained tools and goods. Exceptions were officials who served at the respective seat of power, soldiers in distant garrisons, slaves who toiled on construction sites, in fields and in the villas of the wealthy.
Merchants supplied raw materials to artisans and homeworkers
When capitalism and early industry emerged in England in the 17th century and later in the rest of Europe and North America, it did little to change the circumstances at first, on the contrary. Home trades persisted and even became an indispensable part of the young, mass-producing industries - as a kind of supplier. Developed roads and trade routes, more modern production methods (steam engine, mechanical loom) suited everyone involved, especially the so-called publishing system.
Entrepreneurs, mostly merchants from long-distance trade, delivered raw materials to craftsmen and home workers, who then processed them into products - according to a fixed schedule and wage structure. The entrepreneurs organized the cycle of this cottage industry and "sold" the materials, hence the term publisher (which has nothing to do with today's book or newspaper publishers).
The publishing system had been widespread in Europe since the late Middle Ages and was the backbone of impoverished rural populations. In this way, regional centers developed not only within the European textile industry, for example in Silesia, in Saxony and in the Rhine Valley, but also in the iron and metal trades in Westphalia, in the Sauerland and in the Eifel.
In England, domestic industry was called the "putting-out system", later "domestic system": Workers brought raw materials, sometimes also tools, home from a central warehouse, processed them and returned the finished products a few days later for the contractually agreed price off, and as quickly as possible, because payment was made according to the number of pieces, not the hours.
In the US, 40 percent of manufacturing workers worked from home
The Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith describes the system in 1776 in his most important work "The Wealth of Nations" using the example of needle manufacturers who worked in small factories with up to a dozen family members in their own huts, mostly women and children. Especially for mothers it was often the only possible source of income. Large families depended on multiple incomes, and those who had babies and small children to look after had to somehow reconcile offspring and work at home.
The publishing system lasted for a long time, especially in the textile industry. Raw materials and finished products were neither fragile nor perishable and could be transported comparatively easily. Destitute peasants put looms in their miserable dwellings until the late 19th century. Working from home was the norm in the textile trades, whether in Britain, France, the United States or German countries, especially in winter when agriculture was idle. The rapidly growing populations, the large armies, the court societies had to be clothed. Colonies overseas supplied raw materials such as cotton (India, Egypt), sheep's wool (Australia, New Zealand), hemp or silk (Asia).
The demand for products from domestic industry was enormous, and the emerging large factories could not cover the demands on their own. In the United States in the early 19th century, 40 percent of the manufacturing workforce worked at home, writes the British magazine The Economist, and by 1900 this was still the case for a third of France's workforce ("industrie à domicile").
In Britain, cottage industry even left its mark on architecture: houses from the 18th and 19th centuries often had particularly large - and at the time expensive - windows on the top floor. The weavers were busy there, and they needed sufficient light for their laborious manual work.
The cottage industry eventually lost to progress
Contemporary intellectuals were uneasy about the cottage industry. Karl Marx called the home office "the external department of the factory, the manufacture or the goods store", Max Weber saw the separation of home and workplace "extraordinarily far-reaching consequences", Gerhart Hauptmann reckons in his drama "Die Weber" (1892) with the dwindling homework in Silesia's textile industry.
In retrospect, one might ask which was less bad: being exploited at home or in a factory? In both places, the pay was mostly meager, the dependency high and life miserable. The factory, with its regular 12- to 14-hour days, guaranteed a certain wage security, but in the event of illness or one of the - frequent - accidents on the machines, the job was quickly lost again. Anyone who fell asleep while doing the monotonous work in the semi-mechanized factory hall was threatened with loss of wages or dismissal.
Working from home allowed you to live independently to a certain extent, decide how much and when you worked, sometimes even get enough sleep because you were spared the early morning trip to the factory. A valued factor, then as now.
However, the cottage industry lost to progress. Mines and factories with their huge machinery needed masses of laborers day and night. Unions, strikes, emerging social legislation and collective agreements put pressure on employers and caused wages to rise. The works became more attractive. By the 1850s, English factory workers were being paid 20 percent more than homeworkers, according to The Economist. It was clear who won the race. In Germany in 1900 the proportion of employees in industrial home trades had shrunk to 2.7 percent.
However, it has never disappeared, it has shifted to other sectors and professions. The pandemic is bringing homework back out of necessity and making people aware that leaving the house every day to earn money, even changing locations and spending several hours somewhere in a company or office, was perhaps a mere episode in human history.
