‘I never even tried to get out of work’: low wage service work, work–life interrelationships, and women’s health in the United States

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study focuses on an under-investigated link between work–life interrelationships and health: how low-wage work impacts employees’ health by influencing their management of health-related concerns. Using structuration theory, interviews with 21 low-wage service work (LWSS) women workers were analyzed to identify structures and interactional dynamics in their reported interactions with their supervisors about health-related matters that intersected with work. Three ‘corporate privilege’ structures or ‘recipes for action’ emerged, along with three ‘life friendly’ structures. The structures intersected in three dynamics of supervisor–worker interactions: (a) collaborative reproduction of ‘corporate privilege’ structures, (b) collaborative resistance to ‘corporate privilege,’ and (c) contested reproduction and resistance. In some situations, supervisors and workers alike reproduced corporate privilege structures. In other circumstances, supervisors and workers resisted corporate privilege structures, and in still others supervisors and workers contested structures differently, pointing to potential opportunities for more systematic disruption through organizational interventions.