Precarious Claims: The Promise and Failure of Workplace Protections in the United States

Gleeson, Shannon

doi:10.1525/luminos.19

Cited by 23 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Although the question of legal status is particularly central in determining the durable precarity of undocumented permatemps, the complex knot of factors that structure the contemporary precariat means that even long awaited comprehensive immigration reform will by no means solve the problem of migrant employment precarity. 35 Indeed, that a long-term, undocumented temp could informally approach the level of benefits of a documented direct-hire in the same company says as much about the hidden functions of temp work as it reveals about generalized precarity at the industry level.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chapter Seven. In the Shadow of Employment Precarity

Chauvin¹

2017

Democracy and the Welfare State

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By no means an undifferentiated mass of disposable workers, the new urban 'precariat' is traversed by hierarchies and loyalties that not only impact its exploitation, but also influence its prospects for collective mobilization. In this chapter, I illustrate this argument by considering workforce differentiation in the first decade of the twenty-first century in Chicago's formal day labor sector. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2004 to 2006 involving participant observation in two different day labor agencies as well as several client-factories in Chicago's metropolitan, suburban, and exurban areas. In it, I analyze the internal workforce hierarchies that structure day labor agencies, specifically the importance of 'informal careers.' In each agency, the degree of inequality relates to the level and type of insecurity afflicting workers. I describe three typical conditions within this formally externalized workforce: that of 'casual temps,' who work for various agencies and at various factories; that of 'regular temps,' who are employed by the same agency but are sent to various client companies; and finally, that of 'permatemps,' workers who are employed by the same agency within the same factory for years.The ranks of this last category have swelled even as light-industrial staffing staffing has come to play in the role of an insurance scheme on Chicago's labor market, enabling client companies to 2 | P a g e employ undocumented immigrants without assuming the legal risks that would otherwise be involved.The paper shows how urban and ethno-racial segregation translates into the precarious workplace. As low-end staffing agencies consistently refuse to locate their offices in majority black areas, most African American job seekers are forced to travel daily to the city's immigrant port-ofentry neighborhoods. There, they commonly wait for work tickets alongside mostly undocumented Mexican and Central American applicants. As a consequence, the dispatch rooms of day labor agencies are among the few places in segregated Chicago where "unskilled" African American men and recent Latino immigrants can physically experience mutual economic competition.Following ethno-racial dynamics of inequality, however, this competition in securing employment has uneven consequences for different workers. African American workers tend to be less often and less durably used by client companies. To insure a maximum number of assignments and become 'regular temps' they are thus forced to construct loyalty relations with agency dispatchers.In contrast, a growing number of Latino migrant workers are joining the ranks of 'permatemps': they owe their job security to onsite supervisors, rather than agency dispatchers with whom they only keep contact irregularly. Industrial permatemps, even when undocumented, do not always remain in the lowest tier of the occupational ladder but sometimes benefit from informal careers through which they gradually gain positions of authority, wage increases, and, for some, paid vaca...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chapter Seven. In the Shadow of Employment Precarity

Chauvin¹

2017

Democracy and the Welfare State

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“…Despite legislative protections in place, studies from the United States, Britain, Australia, and Canada show that wage theft is common in contemporary labor markets (Bernhardt, Spiller, & Polson, ). Gleeson's () survey of workers who had made employment standards complaints reveals that three quarters of them had experienced wage theft. In the largest cities in the United States, wage and labor violations are more prevalent among those who work in construction, in private households, in the manufacturing sector, and in janitorial services.…”

Section: Wage Theft For Workers In Precarious Jobsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Roundabout wage theft: The limits of regulatory protections for Ontario workers in precarious jobs

Mirchandani

Bromfield

2019

Journal of Labor and Society

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This article focuses on wage theft experienced by workers in precarious jobs in Ontario, Canada. Workers report that employers utilize subtle forms of wage theft, which one respondent in this study described as “roundabout” wage theft. We argue that the enforcement of the Employment Standards Act requires not only action on overt wage theft but also a proactive approach which challenges employers' subtle practices which result in wage theft. We highlight two sets of practices resulting in wage theft, although these may not always in themselves represent violations of the law. First, employers use discourses of futurity where promises of future work or payment are evoked to deter employee action on unpaid wages. Second, employers set up confusing payment structures which mask unpaid wages as difficult‐to‐detect errors.

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“…Many migrant workers lack formal citizenship in their country of residence, leaving them vulnerable to both exclusion from attractive jobs and abuse at work. Gleeson (, p. 7) theorizes undocumented status—living in a country without official authorization to do so—as a “precarity multiplier” that leads to worsened working conditions, diminished access to legal protections, and limited enjoyment of social safety nets.…”

Section: Citizenship As Worker Dominationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 made it illegal for employers to knowingly hire undocumented workers—a provision still in place as of 2017—and immigration enforcement resulted in growing numbers of deportations between the 1990s and the 2010s. Undocumented workers were especially vulnerable to labor market exclusion, low wages, labor violations, and dangerous working conditions (Gleeson, ; Paret, ). Yet even legal migrants confronted the possibility of deportation.…”

Section: Citizenship As Worker Dominationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizenship and work in global capitalism: From domination to aspiration

Paret

2018

Sociology Compass

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The sociology of citizenship emerged during an exceptional period in which workers benefitted from economic growth and gains in productivity. Yet the field grew against the backdrop of a market-oriented global capitalism defined by high levels of precarious work, surplus labor, and economic insecurity. Tracing the evolution of global capitalism in the wake of World War II, and across the unequal regions of the world, I outline three different perspectives on the relationship between capitalism and work. These include an outdated and untenable perspective of citizenship as workplace product, a critical perspective of citizenship as worker domination, and an optimistic perspective of citizenship as aspiration and agency. The analysis suggests that citizenship represents an important terrain of struggle within global capitalism, simultaneously enabling patterns of domination and inspiring movements for liberation.

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Precarious Claims: The Promise and Failure of Workplace Protections in the United States

Cited by 23 publications

References 72 publications

Chapter Seven. In the Shadow of Employment Precarity

Chapter Seven. In the Shadow of Employment Precarity

Roundabout wage theft: The limits of regulatory protections for Ontario workers in precarious jobs

Citizenship and work in global capitalism: From domination to aspiration

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