Tilman Ellis

From Michael in the comments:

Hunger doesn't create motivated people. Hunger doesn't create a willingness to work together. Hunger doesn't suddenly give people skill-sets they never bothered to learn before....When you create an entitled welfare species it's really hard to get them to do anything useful in a group setting.

I worked with Tilman Ellis in the late 1970s.

Summer of 1967, Detroit. Riots broke out. Spicy times.

About a decade earlier, Tilman was the foreman of a roofing crew in Detroit. The year was 1967.

At the start of the work-day, a mob of potential day-laborers assembled at the work-site. If Tilman estimated that the work-ticket for the day required 10 men, Tilman simply pointed at the first ten men who looked fit and jerked his thumb upward, indicating that they were expected to climb the ladders leaning against the building and join the roofing crew.

The average day-laborer in Detroit at that time was the dregs of society. Any employee could get a job in an auto plant if they had a pulse. Those jobs came with benefits and Union wages and Union representation. Even today, roofers are a very rough bunch of people.

Tilman struggled to complete his work-tickets. The men horse-played and loafed. They were like throwing a balloon into the wind. They moved as long as he was behind them pushing.

A few days into the job, Tilman blew his stack. The crew had been on the roof for about 20 minute when two guys close to the edge started playing grab-ass. "YOU! YOU! Get off my roof!"

To Tilman's amazement, the other eight men straightened up and gave him a solid 7 hours of work.

Tilman was a thoughtful man. Men who were fired in the first hour received no pay. All of the positions at the job-site had been filled so they were not going to get paid work for that day. They had no money to go drinking. If they were lucky enough to have a wife, they had to go home and explain to her (somehow she always knew if he had been hired for the day) why he had a job but lost it.

The next day, the first two guys who started to horse-play, Tilman pointed at them and boomed "YOU! YOU! Get off my roof!"

That day was a repeat of the day before. The remaining men buckled down and gave Tilman an honest day's work.

Soon, Tilman always "hired" two extra men in excess of what he thought he needed. Social dynamics, being what they are, always resulted in a couple of volunteer idiots trying to find the boundaries. Tilman accommodated them.

After a week or so, Tilman had eight guys who WANTED to work on his roof. It was orderly and safe and they didn't have to watch their back. They made sure they were standing near Tillman when he was hiring the day's crew. Tilman never had a problem finding a couple of volunteer idiots to pad out the crew.

Summary

The communist concept of the worker "owning" a job can work for most people but there are enough bringers-of-chaos to poison the actual execution.

Even the roughest of crews can be effective when pay-horizons are very short and consequences are swift and decisive.

It is counter-intuitive, but the day-labor model can actually reduce anxiety for some workers. There is no past. You are just a warm body lugging buckets of molten tar, or swinging a mop or shoveling gravel. You get a fresh start tomorrow even if you screw-up today.

Michael's observation "...entitled welfare species it's really hard to get them to do anything useful in a group setting..." is profound and it points to the solution. Nobody is entitled to their job. You have to earn it every day....every hour.