Re: ketchup, buns and manufacturing

[Gil Skillman <gskillman@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In response to this question from Carrol,

> >
> > Doesn't Taco Bell manufacture food? If Wonderbread was sold at the
> > factory would it cease to be manufacturing and become "service"?

dms answers

> The answer to that is: NO Taco Bell does not manufacture food.  Pepsico
> manufactures something called food products through its Frito Lay (and other
> divisions) but Taco Bell no more manufactures tacos than Col. Saunders
> manufactures chicken, or the Starbuck's outlet down the street manufactures
> coffee, or the Armani Exchange manufactures clothing.
>
> Supermarkets are not food manufacturing enterprises. The clerks stocking,
> pricing, checking out food  at the supermarket are not food manufacturing
> workers, and Taco Bells, Starbucks, KFC, and Armani are all markets..
>
> IF Wonderbread were sold at the factory, the bread itself would still be
> manufactured, (although we would still have an argument about whether or not
> it is actually bread.  I vote for legislated requirements a la the baguette
> in France).  The separation that capital develops between production and
> sales, is  a division of labor  in fact designed to allow non-manufacturing,
> circulation, marketing, the opportunity to keep up with production, to
> conversely not draw  away from production time, and limit production to the
> simple inventory and requirements of the "factory outlet."
>
> McDonald's contracts and sub-contracts for its potatos (introducing the
> Idaho spuds variety into Poland and Russia to get that "authentic"
> McDonald's flavor across the Elbe.  I am not making this up), but it does
> not manufacture the spuds itself.

It's true that fast-food places don't manufacture their own intermediate
goods (which are, in this case, things like potatoes, hamburger patties,
buns, cheese, and whatever that liquid plastic substance is that makes up
their "superthick" shakes), but then neither does virtually any firm that
everyone would agree *is* in the manufacturing sector.  On the other hand,
in such places labor is certainly applied to these inputs, aided by the use
other intermediate goods in the form of machines, to create products that
didn't exist before (as surely as making Wonderbread is manufacturing, even
if the factory doesn't make the flour, or yeast, or salt, or eggs , or
styrofoam, or whatever else goes into its ingredients).  Not a very
involved manufacturing process, to be sure, but manufacturing in any
case.  What blurs the lines with "services" is that usually fast-food
joints also heat up the food and put it in a convenient carry-away bag for
you.  But that doesn't negate what went on before the bag is handed to
you.  Think of it as a special instance of "just-in-time" production.

The real question, it seems to me, is thus not whether "manufacturing" is
involved in such cases, but rather what is the motive underlying the
proposed switch in classification.  And in this case it seems pretty
clear:  the statistics on losses in manufacturing (by current definition)
jobs are pretty damning for Dubya's domestic economic "policy," so a change
in definition would be politically convenient.  But necessarily misleading,
since fast-food jobs are low-wage jobs (as are 6 other of the top 9 or 10
fastest growing occupations in the US).

Gil