The new machine has nothing to do with anything. Your bosses will try to get as much productivity out of you as possible, just below the point at which you will quit and go somewhere else. So how hard you have to work isn’t a function of the conditions at your workplace, but rather a function of the conditions at the other jobs you could possibly move to (and of how hard other potential workers are willing to work).
For example it could have been that there wasn’t much demand for more signs, and so when you got the new machine your employers couldn’t increase production. But this wouldn’t have meant you had to work less hard. Instead they would have fired some of the workforce until the rest of you were working just as hard as before.
They could cut hours, which sometimes does happen in some industries, but then each worker gets paid less because they’re paid by the hour, and individual hourly workers often prefer more hours and more money to fewer hours and less money. (Places like retail stores that hire a lot of part-time workers are notorious for this—people get scheduled for more hours at times of the year when they expect to be busier and fewer when they expect less, but they don’t usually have outright layoffs.)
The new machine has nothing to do with anything. Your bosses will try to get as much productivity out of you as possible, just below the point at which you will quit and go somewhere else. So how hard you have to work isn’t a function of the conditions at your workplace, but rather a function of the conditions at the other jobs you could possibly move to (and of how hard other potential workers are willing to work).
For example it could have been that there wasn’t much demand for more signs, and so when you got the new machine your employers couldn’t increase production. But this wouldn’t have meant you had to work less hard. Instead they would have fired some of the workforce until the rest of you were working just as hard as before.
They could cut hours, which sometimes does happen in some industries, but then each worker gets paid less because they’re paid by the hour, and individual hourly workers often prefer more hours and more money to fewer hours and less money. (Places like retail stores that hire a lot of part-time workers are notorious for this—people get scheduled for more hours at times of the year when they expect to be busier and fewer when they expect less, but they don’t usually have outright layoffs.)