Summary
The conveyor system (in Hebrew, Shitat Ha-Sharsheret), the restructuring of diamond production in Palestine into a chain of specialized work stages in which each worker learned just one phase, or even subphase, of cutting and polishing, against the Antwerp and Amsterdam tradition in which a worker completed the polishing from beginning to end (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.85, p.92).
Details
- David Rothblum’s 21 September 1943 memorandum to the Jewish Agency describes the system: every worker does only a small part of the work, handing the stone on to the next worker until it is finished, so the necessary skill is easily acquired (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.85).
- Compared to Antwerp, in Palestine four to six more workers were required to complete the polishing, and training was shortened from the three-year Antwerp model to three months (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.92-93).
- De Vries presents it as a Taylorization of the labor process — an emphasis on efficiency, productivity and minute exploitation of time, separating actual work from its planning and supervision — blessed by the British authorities (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.92-93).
- A diamond worker wrote in 1943 that the specialization “reduced the worker to the level of a machine” (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.94).