Why Do We Work So Hard?

I have an idea for a grad TD thesis.  I think I would like to have someone look at the amount of physical exertion required of stage technicians.  The point would be to determine what it would take to make our workplace less physical.  Maybe the title of the thesis could be "team lift."

The foundation of the thing would be an analysis of why a workplace requiring significant physical effort could be problematic.  It would seem fairly clear that a workplace like this would be an environment that fostered more injuries, both acute injury, but also likely long term, chronic injury; perhaps ultimately shortening careers.  I also think there's likely an element of this that leads to the perpetuation of misogyny in the workplace.  Those are the issues I can think of off the top of my head, the investigation would look for more.

The next phase would be to determine some kind of standard for acceptable exertion.  The student would have to look at comparable workplaces: likely construction and manufacturing and ascertain what kind of heavy lifting is allowed in those environments.  The 70# team lift idea plays prominently here.  In addition to coming up with a standard, this research might uncover practices which would come into play later.

Once a standard is composed, the next step would be to do an "effort audit" of each fabrication phase for scenery.  The movement and processing of raw materials and of scenery in various stages of fabrication would need to be examined to identify those procedures requiring effort beyond the proposed standard.  The inquiry would also have to look at transportation, installation, strike, restocking, and disposal.  Each of those processes would have to be broken into component tasks, and the required effort for those tasks evaluated against the standard.

At this point there would be an inventory of tasks requiring excessive effort.  Once again looking to industry, for each of these tasks the student would need to propose a work around: some change to procedure or some new piece of equipment that would reduce the necessary physical effort - taking the entire procedure under the proposed threshold.  It is possible this phase could also indicate necessary changes to the physical layout of the shops, trucks, and performance spaces.

Finally, the new processes and equipment would be subject to a budget pass.  With the costs of proposed changes identified, a quantitative analysis of what it would take to get from where we are as a company to where we ought to be could be assembled.

I guess the questions isn't really "why do we work so hard?" but rather "what would it take to arrange things such that workers don't have to rely on physical strength?"  That is a really long title though.