{"title":"Unions, technology and social class inequalities in the US, 1984–2019","authors":"Saverio Minardi","doi":"10.1177/09500170241229277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170241229277","url":null,"abstract":"Earnings inequality in the US has risen in recent decades, with social class inequalities being a central component of this trend. While technological change and de-unionisation are considered key contributors to increased earnings dispersion, their specific influence on inequalities between employees’ social classes has received limited attention. This study theoretically and empirically investigates the relationship between technological change, de-unionisation and the earnings trajectories of occupational classes from 1984 to 2019. The empirical analysis uses industry-level time-series cross-section data and industry-level measures of union density, computer investments and class earnings. Descriptive analyses show earnings growth for non-manual classes and stagnant or declining earnings for manual ones. Results provide limited evidence that computerisation affected classes differently in the industries where introduced. In contrast, industry-level de-unionisation reinforced class inequalities in two ways. First, unionisation exhibited a stronger association with lower-class earnings. Second, manual workers were more prevalent in industries that experienced substantial declines in union density.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"141 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139938935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Francesco Bagnardi, Devi Sacchetto, Francesca Alice Vianello
{"title":"Constructing Mobilities: The Reproduction of Posted Workers’ Disposability in the Construction Sector","authors":"Francesco Bagnardi, Devi Sacchetto, Francesca Alice Vianello","doi":"10.1177/09500170231225622","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231225622","url":null,"abstract":"Posted work is often framed as a business model based on social dumping. Widespread regulatory evasion is imputed to regulation’s opacity, firms’ predatory practices and trade unions’ inability to organise posted workers. Isolation and precariousness channel posted workers’ agency into individualised reworking or exit strategies. These perspectives, however insightful, focus either on formal regulations, enforcement actors or host countries’ institutional settings. Drawing on biographical interviews with Italian construction workers posted abroad, and semi-structured interviews with non-posted workers and stakeholders of the sector in Italy, the article adopts an actor-centred perspective and mobilises the concept of labour regime to show how its disciplining elements operating in the construction sector in Italy stick with workers during their postings and enhance their disposability. Although this sticky labour regime constrains workers’ agency abroad, it remains continuously contested and offers ways for workers to subvert it and improve their employment conditions.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139939017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thank You to Referees","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/09500170231215648","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231215648","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"6 14","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136228656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Experiencing Deportation as Dirty Work? The Case of Dutch Escort Officers","authors":"Teun Eikenaar","doi":"10.1177/09500170231203121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231203121","url":null,"abstract":"In addition to guarding national frontiers, some border patrol officers also escort illegal immigrants abroad. This article analyses this work from an interest in officers’ (moral) experiences and how these relate to the circumstances in which they work, such as occupational culture, policy and procedures. Therefore, the notions of dirty work and moral injury are used as conceptual frameworks, and 14 Dutch escort officers were interviewed about their experiences. This article adds to dirty work analyses by developing an understanding of how workers’ experiences relate to both formal and moral legitimacies and a possible tension between the two. In addition, it extends the literature on moral injury by describing context-dependent forms of impact that escape clinical diagnoses. Theoretically, this article shows that the occupational resources that are elsewhere seen as tools for navigating ‘necessary evils’ can in fact hide the impact of this kind of work.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"16 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136262591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between Status and Stigma: Ethnographies of Emergency Medical Services","authors":"Matthew Joseph Brannan","doi":"10.1177/09500170231206084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231206084","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"27 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136381185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Isabell Kathrin Stamm, Lena Schürmann, Katharina Scheidgen
{"title":"Market Dependence as a Boundary Construction for Work Solidarity with the Solo Self-employed","authors":"Isabell Kathrin Stamm, Lena Schürmann, Katharina Scheidgen","doi":"10.1177/09500170231206083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231206083","url":null,"abstract":"As more people work outside standard employment, the foundations of work solidarity are contested. How does work solidarity arise in atypical forms of work that are characterised by flexible, autonomous and self-dependent organisation, such as in solo self-employment? Drawing on a discursive approach to work solidarity, this article emphasises how market dependence can serve as a boundary construction to create work solidarity. Empirically, this study engages in a discourse analysis on Soforthilfe, a policy measure introduced by the German government to financially assist solo self-employed people during the Covid-19 lockdown. In this discourse, market dependence serves to identify this social group’s need (social boundary) and to set out the corresponding policies for financial assistance (substantive boundary). Four solidarity norms – relief, equality, preservation and quasi-equivalence – support this boundary construction. The article contributes to the current discourse on work solidarity by identifying an additional boundary construction.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136381776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bounded Well-Being: Designing Technologies for Workers’ Well-Being in Corporate Programmes","authors":"Lia Tirabeni","doi":"10.1177/09500170231203113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231203113","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the relationship between workers’ well-being and digitalisation at work. It is based on the findings of a qualitative study carried out in a manufacturing company, and it focuses on the development of a wearable device for well-being. Using the analytical concepts of ‘translation’ and ‘inscription’ taken from Actor-Network Theory, it explores how digital technologies for well-being are designed in corporate programmes and shows how the final technology results from processes of inscription and translation performed by the actors involved in the design phase. The end device embodies a concept of well-being that has been called ‘bounded’ to emphasise how well-being at work is limited by organisational constraints. The article invites a rethinking of hedonic well-being at work as a precondition for eudaimonic well-being so that the human being is understood as a psychophysical unit that is part of a rich social context.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135778790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vera Trappmann, Charles Umney, Christopher J McLachlan, Alexandra Seehaus, Laura Cartwright
{"title":"How Do Young Workers Perceive Job Insecurity? Legitimising Frames for Precarious Work in England and Germany","authors":"Vera Trappmann, Charles Umney, Christopher J McLachlan, Alexandra Seehaus, Laura Cartwright","doi":"10.1177/09500170231187821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231187821","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the legitimising frames young workers in England and Germany apply to precarious work. Through 63 qualitative biographical interviews, the article shows that most young precarious workers saw work insecurity as an unavoidable fact of life whose legitimacy could not realistically be challenged. Four frames are identified that led to precarious work being seen as legitimate: precarious work as a driver of entrepreneurialism; as inevitable due to repeated exposure; as a stage within the life course; and as the price paid for the pursuit of autonomy and meaningful work. The article advances the literature on precarious workers’ subjectivity by identifying the frames through which it is legitimised, and by underlining the importance of frames that are currently underexamined. The prevalence of the pursuit of meaningful, non-alienating work as a frame is a particularly striking finding.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134975256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chloe Maclean, Zara Brodie, Roxanne Hawkins, Jack Cameron McKinlay
{"title":"‘At Times it’s Too Difficult, it is Too Traumatic, it’s Too Much’: The Emotion Work of Domestic Abuse Helpline Staff During Covid-19","authors":"Chloe Maclean, Zara Brodie, Roxanne Hawkins, Jack Cameron McKinlay","doi":"10.1177/09500170231200080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231200080","url":null,"abstract":"During the Covid-19 lockdowns, domestic abuse helpline staff (DAHS) in the UK faced both a shift from working in an office to working-from-home and an increased demand for their services. This meant that during Covid-19, DAHS faced an increase in traumatic calls, and all within their own homes. This article explores the emotions work of DAHS to manage and work through their work-related emotions during Covid-19. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 11 UK-based DAHS, this article suggests that working-from-home during the Covid-19 lockdowns amplified emotions of anxiety, helplessness and guilt for DAHS alongside an evaporating emotional distance between work and home life. Engaging in leisure activities and increased online meetings with colleagues were emotion work practices that DAHS used to emotionally cope. This article demonstrates that emotion work fills in for, and masks, the structural insufficiencies of employer worker-wellbeing practices.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135591325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Stephen Ackroyd and Paul Thompson, Organisational Misbehaviour","authors":"A. Wood","doi":"10.1177/09500170231167083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231167083","url":null,"abstract":"so doing become a significant drama of dignity. The other main drama – relationships with co-workers and managers, and with clients and other ‘upperworld’ individuals – is analysed in Chapter 3. The cleaners are shown to eschew occupational solidarity in favour of social differentiation based on continual ‘othering’, a process of categorising that positions others as different and inferior (pp. 83–84). However, cleaners share the shame of being underclass members, and with few exceptions, openly practise racial discrimination against co-workers, a combination that warranted more discussion. Although cleaners mainly work outside of normal business hours and occupy spaces below ground level, they clean the ‘upperworld’ and occasionally interact with clients and other workers. Chapter 4 examines the strategies cleaners use to maintain their dignity against expectations of invisibility and assumptions of social inferiority. These include taking advantage by obtaining special access to events such as film festivals, debunking artefacts and art in the city complex, and practising ‘ressentiment’, a deeply felt hostility to the powerful (p. 108). In particular, client complaints about their work offend cleaners’ dignity but ‘talking back’ is risky. Management do not offer support and co-workers are rarely helpful, as they too feel unjustly treated and liable to vent their anger on their colleagues (p. 124). So, with few exceptions, cleaner encounters with the ‘upperworld’ are part and parcel of the drama of dignity. Chapter 6 turns the spotlight on how the cleaners respond to their superiors, including consequences for human dignity. However, instead of a comprehensive analysis of the management system, we learn how cleaners use different strategies to counter security guard camera surveillance, thereby maintaining their autonomy and sense of dignity. In the concluding chapter, Costas argues that the cleaners do find dignity from their work, but this is constantly challenged by their experiences at work as described earlier. Although other types of low status service workers are mentioned, there is no attempt to broaden the analysis. Neither is there any theory development employing such relevant concepts as shame, resentment, respect, autonomy, self-esteem and dignity. Instead, there is a discussion of how cleaners’ consciousness expresses both aspiration and desperation as depicted by two photographs (reproduced on pp. 154–155), which exist on a wall in the ‘minus area’ of Potsdamer Platz. Notwithstanding the above-mentioned limitations, Dramas of Dignity is a lucid and engaging close-up study of cleaners that deserves attention by sociologists and social psychologists of work. It will also animate discussion in advanced undergraduate and graduate student classes.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"37 1","pages":"1435 - 1437"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47501821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}