speedup

plural speedups · alternative speed-up

1. countableuncountableAn amount or rate of decrease in time taken to do a certain amount of work.

   The results of this generalized speedup of the corporate metabolism are multiple: shorter product life cycles, more leasing and renting, more frequent buying and selling, more ephemeral consumption patterns, […]

   1980, Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, page 230

   Antonyms: slowdown

2. countableuncountablecomputingThe relationship between time taken and number of processors used.
3. countableuncountablelabourgovernmentAn employer's demand for more output without more pay.

   For the mass of new workers who had not come out of a syndicalist or craft tradition, incentive pay and the speedup idea carried relatively little negative meaning.

   1987, Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II, page 145

   3 more examples

   There were, of course, those observers who argued that since in some industries 50 or 60 per cent of those employed were scientific, technical, and administrative staff, the employer would soon include them in his speedup plans.

   1975 March 20, New Scientist, volume 65, number 941, page 711

   The strike was over a speedup of the assembly line, which in the previous week had increased from 49 to 58 cars per hour. Out of this strike emerged the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM).

   1997, Vincent Harding, Robin D. G. Kelley, Earl Lewis, We Changed the World: African Americans 1945-1970, page 171

   With constant speedup of the line and with the cold temperatures of the plant, one angry worker told me, “After ten years, people walk like they're sixty or seventy."

   2007, Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of, page 54

   Synonyms: stretch-out · Antonyms: go-slow, slowdown, work-to-rule