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The Good, the Bad, and the Gig Economy
There are good jobs, which have fair wages, security, and a career ladder. There are bad jobs, which have none of these.
And then there are “good bad jobs,” otherwise known as gig work.
Continue Reading…The Good, the Bad, and the Gig Economy
There are good jobs, which have fair wages, security, and a career ladder. There are bad jobs, which have none of these.
And then there are “good bad jobs,” otherwise known as gig work.
Continue Reading…Not long ago, labor scholars and activists fastened on Walmart’s labor practices as providing the most influential template for the “low road” approach toward employment generally. Since then, Amazon has in many ways surpassed Walmart, overtaking it in many retail markets, and bringing into play a whole new set of labor practices, many of which are equipped with powerful digital surveillance tools. This raises the question: What, precisely, do we know about the labor control mechanisms that workers encounter in Amazon’s warehouses? Despite journalistic forays and scattered but growing academic research, we have only a faint and tenuous outline of the company’s managerial regime, and of the workers’ responses to it.[1]
Continue Reading…Imagine a small, rustic distillery tucked away in Utah’s Uinta mountains. The air is crisp with hints of fermenting grain and aging whiskey. Inside, a dedicated artisan tends to the copper still, crafting small batches of handmade spirits with care. Each bottle reflects the maker’s dedication and knowledge of the land.
This romantic image is likely what comes to mind when we hear “craft spirits.” We envision devoted producers pursuing their passion for making unique, quality products that stand in contrast to those mass-produced by big-name brands. It’s no wonder, then, that the craft spirits industry has seen such impressive growth in recent years.
But how accurately does this idealized image reflect the reality experienced by craft distillers? In a recent study, forthcoming in Qualitative Sociology, my colleague Eylül Yel and I shed new light on this question, revealing a landscape far more complex than this idealized vision suggests.
Continue Reading…When I asked a Latin American street vendor in NYC if he has free time, he replied: “For what? This is my freedom, work is freedom. This is fun for me. Some people may pass by and think, ‘poor man selling churros in the street in such a cold weather’, but I do not feel like that, I feel good, I make money.”
Precarious work has increased globally in recent decades, influencing workers’ perceptions of their jobs. A defining feature of precarious work is the combination of bad working conditions with greater autonomy and flexibility. As a result, workers from various sectors, including freelance workers, platform workers, entrepreneurs, and street vendors highlight the benefits of working for themselves.
Continue Reading…Interracial solidarity – the willingness of white workers to unite with racialized others, especially Black people, against capital – is a question that has haunted the institutionalized U.S. labor movement from its birth in the 1860s to the present day. We need only look to the white working class voters who support Donald Trump for just one example of this persistent challenge.
Unfortunately, the existing research is ill-equipped to explain the conditions that enable and constrain interracial labor solidarity. The relevant scholarly debate turns on an either/or question: did organized labor in the United States exclude or protect Black labor? On one side, scholars emphasize unions’ racially exclusionary practices. On the other side, scholars have focused on how some unions were largely inclusive. As readers, we are meant to make three inferences. First, while conservative whites were certainly racist, progressive whites recognized Black workers as their equals. Second, U.S. labor history’s protagonists were whites, while Black people were the passive beneficiaries or victims of white workers. Third, white progressives’ class analysis of capitalism was correct: employers do use racism to divide and weaken the working class.
Continue Reading…Lots of media attention addresses the payment of subminimum wages to workers with disabilities employed in segregated workshops. In 2009, an Iowa Turkey farm was exposed for keeping dozens of men with intellectual disabilities in captivity for over thirty years, paying them $65 per month for decades of full-time manual labor. But a new study shows that programs trying to raise wages for workers with disabilities still place many in precarious, low-wage jobs due to the constraints of American disability policy.
Continue Reading…Where does better or worse regulation come from? At a time when financial crises are growing more frequent and more spectacular around the world, this question has only become more important. The quality and efficacy of economic regulation is also something that varies across time and place. Understanding the source of this variation holds important lessons for effective regulatory design for those who are willing to pay attention.
In my recent book, Visions of Financial Order, I offer new insight into the origins of regulatory success and failure by explaining the divergent development of banking regulation in three countries that were supposed to be following the same international regulatory rules—the U.S., Canada, and Spain—in the decades leading up to the 2008 global financial crisis. I show that in each country, banking regulators made different choices in key areas that directly impacted how banks experienced the crisis.
Continue Reading…For the past decade, major technology companies have grappled with the underrepresentation of women in their industry, especially in technical roles like software engineering. Much of the conversation surrounding gender inequality in the tech industry focuses on the educational pipeline: specifically, the relatively low proportions of women graduating with computer science degrees.
In a new article in the American Journal of Sociology, I argue that women are not only underrepresented in these technical roles because they lack educational credentials but because they are not given the same opportunities as men to learn relevant skills on the job.
Continue Reading…Neoliberalism has profoundly transformed industrial relations systems—most notably, the implementation of pro-business labor policies aiming at decentralizing collective bargaining and restricting unions’ bargaining power.
In the last decades, neoliberalism has been publicly contested by labor unions and social movements across the globe. However, neoliberal labor policies have proven resilient against reform. In most countries progressive governments have been unable to implement policies to restore the institutional power resources unions used to have during the “golden age” of welfare capitalism.
Why is it so difficult to reform neoliberal, pro-business labor laws? How, in the context of highly globalized societies, can workers overcome the constraints progressive governments face in promoting pro-labor policies? How, in these contexts, can organized labor influence the policymaking process?
Continue Reading…In times of geopolitical tension generated by great power rivalry, ordinary politics and policies are often attributed to “grand strategy,” a centrally coordinated master plan for achieving hegemonic aims. This is especially so if the policymaker in question is an authoritarian country with significant economic and military might, such as China. For instance, Made in China 2025, an industrial policy that aims to enhance the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing sectors , is widely seen as a top-down industrial strategy driven by China’s supreme leaders and embodying the national will.
My book, Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics, traces the origin of economic policies that have propelled China’s economic growth. It reveals the meso-level genesis of what are taken as “grand strategies”: they are formulated by ministry- and bureau-level bureaucrats who have a stake in developing policies that advance their careers in a competitive bureaucracy. Without understanding this bureaucratic source of modern politics, we fail to appreciate the backstage machinations that explain what policies emerge on the front stage.
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