A floor to exploitation? Social economy organizations at the edge of a restructuring economy

Abstract

Despite research documenting social economy organizations (SEOs) as important labour market intermediaries in the informal economy, the impact of these organizations on employment outcomes experienced by workers engaged in these labour markets is relatively unknown. This article analyses the impact of day labour worker centres on employment outcomes experienced in the informal day labour economy of the United States. Using data from the National Day Labour Survey, findings indicate that these organizations improve working conditions for day labourers and suggest the potential for SEOs to regulate employment processes within the informal economy. However increasing the regulatory capacity of SEOs will require addressing larger political and socioeconomic contexts in which the informal economy is embedded.

Captive in Cycles of Invisibility? Prisoners’ Work for the Private Sector

“…The type of work undertaken in Workshops 1-4 was typical of the increasingly devalued low paid, repetitive and precarious work in the external labour market, as described by Visser (2017).…”

“…The people in our workshop, we don't learn anything, we just do basic work that even a two-year-old could do …put a sticker on something, put it in a box, then put it in a bigger box and send it out … that's nothing … I wish I was (Hatton, 2015(Hatton, : 1008 which they had already rejected in favour of more lucrative, perhaps more exciting, illicit activity (see Crook, 2007). In this context, their vision of an alternative future was not sparked by prison-work that spoke only of the low pay, poor training and insecurity of marginalized, invisible work (Visser, 2017: 783; see also Wakefield and Uggen, 2010: 387). Although prison-work alone can be no panacea for wider social problems (Silva and Saraiva, 2016: 375), the work assigned to inmates in Workshops 1-4 failed to bridge the boundary between legal noneconomic work inside prison and an imagining of lawful economic work post-release.…”

“…It follows that in socio-legal terms, prisoners' work activities are 'not classified as '"jobs" at all' (Hatton, 2017: 346) (Hatton, 2017: 339; see also Visser, 2017;Zatz, 2008). Such personal histories then become highly influential for invisible work inside prison, colouring workshop instructors' expectations of inmates' potential and consigning the majority to highly repetitive, low skilled, low paid activity.…”

“…While originally applied to women's unpaid labour (Daniels, 1987), the definition of invisible work has come to encompass a wide range of devalued, noneconomic, informalised, casualised work in the current labour market (Hatton, 2015(Hatton, , 2017; see also Visser, 2017;Zatz and Boris, 2014). Accordingly, Hatton (2017: 346) has identified and theorised the 'sociological mechanisms' of social, economic, cultural, legal and spatial disadvantage that underpin such forms of work.…”

“…Theoretically and more broadly, in tandem with consideration of the findings through the lens of rehabilitation (for example, Shea, 2007;Silva and Saraiva, 2016;Wakefield and Uggen, 2010;Visher and Travis, 2003), the article problematises ' [and] make[s] visible a domain of excluded work' (Zatz and Boris, 2014: 96;also Hatton, 2015also Hatton, , 2017Zatz, 2008). In so doing, the broader implications of invisible work in the wider labour market are operationalised and exposed to scrutiny, highlighting its deleterious impact on those who labour without meaningful recognition for their efforts, be that dignity in their labour or prospects of economic and social betterment (Hatton, 2015;Standing, 2011;Visser, 2017).…”