Six Men Meet Every Day to Decide What You Do | How Hutterites Assign Work

Nobody ever asked me what I wanted to do. Not as a figure of speech — there was no conversation. And the man who tells you has a title. On a colony he is the farm manager, and the other name for that job, the one we actually use, is the work distributor. There is a man here whose position is distributing the work, and what he distributes is people. I keep the books on a colony in southern Alberta. In this video: who sits in the room where your working life is decided and how often they meet, why there has never been a secret ballot here, what actually happens to a fifteen-year-old on the morning he becomes a man, why the men are trained narrow and the women are trained broad — and the one man on every colony this system cannot place, who everybody knows and nobody mentions. I also make the case, seriously, that we are better at this than you are. And then I tell you what it costs. SOURCES · Hutterites.org, "Organizational Structure" — the minister (Prediger), the colony manager (Hausholter), the farm manager (Weinzedl), "also called the work distributor", the witness brothers elected for life, the board meeting daily for about an hour, and job positions being among the matters it decides · Hutterites.org, "Decision Making" — that all baptised men vote on board appointments and major expenditures, that consensus is sought first, and that when it fails each man states his position out loud · Canadian Food Focus — that roles are assigned on interest, aptitude and seniority, and that colonies hire agronomists, veterinarians and business advisers from outside · Amish America, interview with Linda Maendel — that women between 17 and 45 rotate through the kitchen and cleaning duties · Manitoba Co-operator, "Secrets of a Hutterite Kitchen" — the head cook as one of the five managerial roles held by women If you find an error, put it in the comments and I will pin the correction. I would rather be right than look right.