Low-wage Service Research Articles

The Studentification of Low-Wage Service Work in Sweden: Who Participates?

The Studentification of Low-Wage Service Work in Sweden: Who Participates?

Youth and hospitality work: Skills, subjectivity and affective labour

Hospitality is popularly regarded as unskilled work and the industry relies on a young labour force. This paper examines the role of youth in the way that the ‘unskilled’ status of hospitality labour is defined and contested by workers. Drawing on qualitative data collected with hospitality workers, the paper creates new connections between theories of affective labour, the politics of skills, and conceptions of youth in relation to work. The paper shows that the capacity to be ‘fun’ and produce affects of enjoyment in hospitality venues is essentialised as an attribute of youth, who are regarded as essentially unskilled. Youth is enacted in the social relations of affective labour, including the requirement to produce affects of enjoyment. The paper shows how theories of affective labour can be developed to consider the materialities of low-wage service employment and demonstrates the significance of youthful subjectivities to social relations of hospitality work.

The ‘Organized Anxiety’ of Labour Leader Nannie Helen Burroughs

Educator and labour leader Nannie Helen Burroughs and her colleagues at the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACW) experienced ‘organized anxiety’ during the early twentieth century as they worked to establish a comprehensive labour reform movement in the United States. Burroughs’ colleague and NACW leader Fannie Barrier Williams coined the term ‘organized anxiety’ to describe Black women’s politicized emotions that fuelled their expansive organization as they worked to build a truly democratic society. NACW members, such as Burroughs, integrated their fight for labour rights into their larger movement for women’s suffrage and civil rights. Burroughs established a school and women’s organizations to challenge ideologies and institutions that confined Black women to low-wage service work and denied them full citizenship rights. In this article, I draw from Hochschild’s emotional labour theory, which brings women’s ‘invisible’ work into view, and Williams’ organized anxiety concept to examine Burroughs’ unrecognized, yet critical work of developing and leading a labour reform movement for Black women in a country that denied their very humanity.

Family Work Histories: Centering First-Generation and Working-Class Students in a Sociology Course

First-generation students often feel alone on college campuses. These students can find themselves excluded from organizations, traditions, and spaces that require financial, social, and cultural capital they may not have. In my Sociology of Work course, I use a family work history project to center and validate their experiences. Using census records and other sources, students reconstruct their parents’, grandparents’, and great-grandparents’ experience in the workplace. The histories of my first-generation students, in turn, provide the lens through which we collectively build a sociological analysis of the way that work shapes the trajectory of our lives. More specifically, these histories have taken us from farm and factory to the low-wage service sector, revealing both the troubles facing those without a college degree as well as their resilience. Overall, students describe this as a deeply meaningful project that confirms the pedagogical value of storytelling, particularly for first-generation students.

‘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 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.

Creating inclusivity through boundary work? Zooming in on low-wage service sector work

Workers in the low-wage service sector represent a sociodemographically heterogeneous and particularly vulnerable group in terms of job security, job quality and health implications. However, organizational inclusion research has largely neglected this group. In contrast, this article builds on a qualitative study of a Dutch aircraft cleaning company in order to assess the ‘inclusivity of inclusion approaches’ for less privileged groups of employees. By reconstructing how managers and cleaners draw/rework boundaries, we identify certain configurations of inclusion and exclusion that can unfold more or less ‘inclusive’ consequences for historically disadvantaged group members, and more or less exclusionary repercussions for particularly privileged and/or majority group members. We stress the need to say goodbye to a linear narrative of organizations becoming ‘inclusive as such’. Furthermore, we argue that the presence of decent working and employment conditions and the absence of steep differences in those conditions between groups represent the ‘silent foundation’ of creating inclusivity. Consequently, we ask: does inclusion research reach its ‘natural limits’ by tiptoeing around the topic of equality?

Work-related stressors and mental health among LGBTQ workers: Results from a cross-sectional survey.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals experience high rates of adverse mental health outcomes due to the stressors they experience in families, communities, and society more broadly. Work and workplaces have the potential to influence these outcomes given their ability to amplify minority stress, and their ability to influence social and economic wellbeing in this already marginalized population. This study aims to identify how sociodemographic characteristics and characteristics of work, including degree of precarity, industry and perceived workplace support for LGBTQ people, influence self-reported mental health among LGBTQ people in two Canadian cities. Self-identified LGBTQ workers ≥16 years of age (n = 531) in Sudbury and Windsor, Ontario, Canada were given an online survey between July 6 and December 2, 2018. Multivariate ordinal logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios (OR) to evaluate differences in gender identity, age, income, industry, social precarity, work environment, and substance use among workers who self-reported very poor, poor, or neutral mental health, compared with a referent group that self-reported good or very good mental health on a five-point Likert scale about general mental health. LGBTQ workers with poor or neutral mental health had greater odds of: being cisgender women or trans compared with being cisgender men; being aged <35 years compared with ≥35 years; working in low-wage service sectors compared with blue collar jobs; earning <$20,000/year compared with ≥$20,000/year; working in a non-standard work situation or being unemployed compared with working in full-time permanent employment; feeling often or always unable to schedule time with friends due to work; feeling unsure or negative about their work environment; and using substances to cope with work. Both precarious work and unsupportive work environments contribute to poor mental health among LGBTQ people. These factors are compounded for trans workers who face poorer mental health than cis-LGBQ workers in similar environments.

“It’s Not Like Chasing Chanel:” Spending Time, Investing in the Self, and Pandemic Epiphanies

The Covid-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the labor market and given rise to the Great Resignation. Drawing on a mixed methods panel study of 199 precarious and gig-based workers, we analyze how a changing conception of free time during the Covid-19 pandemic led low-wage service workers to seek more fulfilling careers. Whereas most workers initially perceived free time in terms of opportunity costs, they later reconceived this time as enabling an investment in personal growth, moving from “spending time” making money to “investing time” in themselves. This shift in temporal experience is expressed through the adoption of a “work passion” logic and “pandemic epiphanies” that motivated respondents to seek self-affirming and potentially more lucrative work opportunities.

Microbiome alterations associated with phthalate exposures in a US-based sample of Latino workers

Low-wage service sector jobs are largely occupied by racial/ethnic minority workers who often experience an increased risk of elevated chemical exposures, including chemicals like phthalates, compared to the general public. Phthalates have been linked with adverse health effects, including increased risk of atopy and asthma. An important etiological component in respiratory disease, including asthma, is the role of the upper respiratory microbiota in atopic disease development. However, it is unclear how the upper respiratory microbiome is affected by chemical exposures, and how this may impact respiratory outcomes. As Latino workers are often disproportionately exposed to increased concentrations of chemicals and Hispanics have higher rates of adverse respiratory health conditions such as asthma, the aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the effects of 10 unique phthalate urinary biomarkers on the 16S rRNA nasal microbiome. Nasal and urinary samples were collected from 20 facility workers (plumbers, landscapers, electricians) and 20 custodial workers. Our analysis revealed altered microbial composition and diversity according to phthalate urinary biomarker concentration within the two worker groups. Higher urinary biomarker concentrations of select phthalates (MBP, MBIP, and ∑DEHP) were associated with increased Moraxella relative abundance, which has been positively associated with asthma. Within-sample alpha diversity levels were decreased in facility workers and were generally inversely associated with most phthalate urinary biomarker concentrations. Our research suggests that exposure to chemicals in this vulnerable worker group may impact the respiratory microbiome, which may increase risk of development of adverse health conditions. Further research is warranted to refine the mechanistic pathways that underpin the relationships between phthalate exposures and respiratory microbial communities to provide key insights on respiratory pathologies and, most importantly, to identify modifiable risk factors that can be used to direct mitigation efforts aimed at ameliorating the harmful effects of chemical exposures in this understudied occupational population.

Hollowing out of opportunity: Automation technology and intergenerational mobility in the United States

Recent automation technology has lead to job polarization in the U.S. labour market since 1980. Middle-skill jobs, which provide decent wages for relatively uneducated people, have been shrinking in terms of employment share, pushing those workers into low-wage service jobs. In this paper, by exploiting spatial variation in the exposure to technological substitution, I provide suggestive evidence that automation technology has contributed to the decline of upward mobility of children from poor and middle-class families. My analysis suggests that middle-skill jobs are an indispensable channel for disadvantaged children to move upward. In addition, this paper provides a plausible explanation for the puzzling observation that relative mobility has stayed constant in the U.S. during recent decades, despite the rapidly increasing income inequality.

Customer Abuse and Aggression as Labour Control Among LGBT Workers in Low-Wage Services.

This study examines the relation between customer abuse and aggression, the gender and sexual expression of workers, and labour control in low-wage services. In-depth interviews with 30 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)1 low-wage service sector workers reveal how customer abuse and aggression works in consort with management strategies to reproduce cis- and heteronormativity. Customer abuse and aggression disciplined worker expressions of non-normative gender and sexual identities, leading to concealment and self-policing. Management was complicit in this dynamic, placing profitability and customer satisfaction over the safety of LGBT workers, only intervening in instances of customer abuse and aggression when it had a limited economic impact. It is posited that customer abuse and aggression is not only a response to unmet expectations emanating from the labour process but is also a mechanism of labour control that disciplines worker behaviour and aesthetics, directly and indirectly, by influencing management prerogatives.

Migration outside large cities: a comparison of the hiring of migrants for the food processing industry in the United States and Japan

Recent studies suggest that the hiring of migrants in the food processing industry has increased the migrant population outside large cities among affluent migrant-receiving countries. This study examines how the U.S. meatpacking industry and the Japanese seafood processing industry, in particular, have developed a dependence on migrants; it does so to identify whether and how a common—thus cross-nationally generalizable—process may account for migration outside large cities. A comparative historical analysis revealed that, with significant national differences between the United States and Japan, including in the legal and institutional contexts of migration, there is little commonality in the processes through which the industries have come to depend on migrants. Yet, there is a similarity in the development of mass production. Such production necessitates an undisrupted availability of full-time as well as low-wage workforce, and migrants on both sides of the Pacific are employed to ensure this availability. Thus, while urban-centered migration studies often emphasize the growth of low-wage services or small-batch manufacturing as an economic driver of migration, this study argues that, outside large cities, a different pattern of industrial transformation is associated with labor migration.

Implementation of an organizational intervention to improve low-wage food service workers\u2019 safety, health and wellbeing: findings from the Workplace Organizational Health Study

BackgroundMany organizational interventions aim to improve working conditions to promote and protect worker safety, health, and well-being. The Workplace Organizational Health Study used process evaluation to examine factors influencing implementation of an organizational intervention. This paper examines the extent to which the intervention was implemented as planned, the dose of intervention implemented, and ways the organizational context hindered or facilitated the implementation of the intervention.MethodsThis proof-of-concept trial was conducted with a large, multinational company that provides food service through contractual arrangements with corporate clients. The 13-month intervention was launched in five intervention sites in October 2018. We report findings on intervention implementation based on process tracking and qualitative data. Qualitative data from 25 post-intervention interviews and 89 process tracking documents were coded and thematically analyzed.ResultsOver the 13-month intervention, research team representatives met with site managers monthly to provide consultation and technical assistance on safety and ergonomics, work intensity, and job enrichment. Approximately two-thirds of the planned in-person or phone contacts occurred. We tailored the intervention to each site as we learned more about context, work demands, and relationships. The research team additionally met regularly with senior leadership and district managers, who provided corporate resources and guidance. By assessing the context of the food service setting in which the intervention was situated, we explored factors hindering and facilitating the implementation of the intervention. The financial pressures, competing priorities and the fast-paced work environment placed constraints on site managers’ availability and limited the full implementation of the intervention.ConclusionsDespite strong support from corporate senior leadership, we encountered barriers in the implementation of the planned intervention at the worksite and district levels. These included financial demands that drove work intensity; turnover of site and district managers disrupting continuity in the implementation of the intervention; and staffing constraints that further increased the work load and pace. Findings underscore the need for ongoing commitment and support from both the parent employer and the host client.Trial registrationThis study was retrospectively registered with the Clinical Trials. Gov Protocol and Results System on June 2, 2021 with assigned registration number NCT04913168.

The Motherhood Penalty in Context: Assessing Discrimination in a Polarized Labor Market

Prior research provides important insights into employer discrimination against mothers but has focused exclusively on college-educated mothers in professional and managerial occupations. As a result, we lack evidence about whether less-educated mothers navigating the low-wage labor market experience similar disadvantages and whether the mechanisms underlying discrimination vary across contexts. These gaps are important because more- and less-educated mothers increasingly possess distinct resources and face unique demands both at home and at work, which may impact employer perceptions of conflicts between motherhood and job performance. This study reports results from an original field experiment in which 2,210 fictitious applications were submitted to low-wage service and professional/managerial job openings across six U.S. cities, experimentally manipulating signals of motherhood status. Findings provide causal evidence that employers in both contexts discriminate against mothers relative to equally qualified childless women. However, within labor market segments, distinct job demands listed in job advertisements are associated with stronger discrimination: time pressure, collaboration, and travel in professional/managerial jobs and schedule instability in low-wage service jobs. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the mechanisms underlying mothers' disadvantages in an increasingly polarized labor market.

Human Resources and Service Quality: The Mediating Role of Employees’ Human Capital and Turnover

The relationship between human resource management practices and performance has received considerable attention; however, the mechanisms that link bundles of practices, intermediate outcomes, and performance in service contexts, are not yet fully understood. The article unpacks their relationship by applying a framework that combines an employment systems approach with human capital theory. It uses unique longitudinal matched employer- employee data from the social care sector in England to test the framework and to examine the pathways that underpin the impact of HRM practices on performance. The analysis provides evidence that the impact of skills-enhancing and motivation-enhancing HR practices on service quality is mediated by collective human capital and voluntary turnover. The results support the importance of a more widespread diffusion of HRM practices in low wage services sectors that improve service quality through investment on employees’ human capital and reduction of turnover.

The Flip Side of Turnover: Employment Transitions and Occupational Attachment Among Low-Wage Care Workers in the United States

Scholars have explored the ways that conventional economic theory does not fully explain the distribution and characteristics of caring labor – the work, unpaid and paid, of caring for those who are young, elderly, or disabled. This paper explores a critical dimension of paid care – high turnover rates in the lowest-wage segment of the sector (including childcare, nursing homes, home health). Using longitudinal data from the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) in the US, it examines the “flip side” of that turnover by comparing occupational mobility among low-wage care workers to that of other low-wage service workers. The findings indicate that patterns of occupational transition among care workers are distinct in important ways. Understanding occupational attachment among paid care workers is critical to developing theoretical models about care and to creating care-specific policies to address employee turnover and its negative impact on care quality. HIGHLIGHTS High turnover in low-wage jobs in care-related fields has a negative impact on the quality of care. Low-wage care workers have longer job tenures and are more likely to stay in their field than other low-wage workers. Low-wage care workers experience more upward mobility than food service and cleaning workers, but less than office and sales workers. Low-wage care workers have high rates of transition to a period of not working. There is evidence of higher levels of occupational attachment among low-wage care workers than among other low-wage service workers.

COVID-19-Related Changes to Pregnant People's Work-Plans Increase Prenatal Depression.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented rates of unemployment in the United States. Pregnant workers may be especially affected as they are over-represented in low-wage service and hospitality industries impacted by the pandemic. We surveyed an online convenience sample of currently working pregnant people living in the U.S. (n = 1,417) to determine whether COVID-19-related changes to how long individuals planned to work during their pregnancy, and uncertainty about these changes, were associated with prenatal depression. As hypothesized, both COVID-19-related work-plan changes (OR = 1.81, 95% CI 1.36–2.42, p < 0.001) and uncertainty about the precise nature of these changes (OR = 2.62, 95% CI 1.14–6.0, p = 0.022) were associated with significantly higher odds of a clinically-significant depression score. These effects appeared to be even greater among individuals who continued working outside the home during the pandemic. Since the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that does not guarantee paid parental leave, pregnant people may be forced to choose between keeping their jobs and risking infection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results demonstrate a need for immediate suspension of the eligibility requirements for the Family and Medical Leave Act and/or universal access to both paid family leave and prenatal depression screening. This would help to alleviate these concerns and provide pregnant people with more options while preserving their employment status and financial security.

No Choice but to Be Essential: Expanding Dimensions of Precarity During COVID-19

Under COVID-19, low-wage service sector workers found themselves as essential workers vulnerable to intensified precarity. Based on in-depth interviews with a sample of 52 low-wage service workers interviewed first in Summer 2019 and then in the last two weeks of April 2020, we argue that COVID-19 has created new and heightened dimensions of precarity for low-wage workers. They experience (1) moments of what we call precarious stability, in which an increase in hours and predictable schedules is accompanied by unpredictability in the tasks workers are assigned, (2) increased threats to bodily integrity, and (3) experiences of fear and anxiety as background conditions of work and intensified emotional labor. The impacts of COVID-19 on workers’ lives warrant an expanded conceptualization of precarity that captures the dynamic and shifting nature of precarious stability and must incorporate workers’ limited control over their bodily integrity and emotions as core components of precarious working conditions.

Profiting on Crisis: How Predatory Financial Investors Have Worsened Inequality in the Coronavirus Crisis.

A once-in-a-century pandemic has sparked an unprecedented health and economic crisis. Less examined is how predatory financial investors have shaped the crisis and profited from it. We examine how U.S. shadow banks, such as private equity, venture capital, and hedge fund firms, have affected hardship and inequality during the crisis. First, we identify how these investors helped to hollow out the health care industry and disenfranchise the low-wage service sector, putting frontline workers at risk. We then outline how, as the downturn unfolds, shadow banks are shifting their investments in ways that profit on the misfortunes of frontline workers, vulnerable populations, and distressed industries. After the pandemic subsides and governments withdraw stimulus support, employment will likely remain insecure, many renters will face evictions, and entire economic sectors will need to rebuild. Shadow banks are planning accordingly to profit from the fallout of the crisis. We argue that this case reveals how financial investors accumulate capital through private and speculative investments that exploit vulnerabilities in the economic system during a time of crisis. To conclude, we consider the prospects for change and inequality over time.

Intersectional Occupational Crowding: Labor Market Stratification Amongst Women Workers in New Orleans

This descriptive paper examines racial and gender patterns of employment in New Orleans Louisiana using the 2018 American Communities Survey microdata in the context of the post-Katrina economy, with a focus on women workers. This paper reviews the literature on occupational crowding, and then uses a simple measure of crowding to analyze the local labor market focusing on an intersectional lens to examine patterns by race and ethnicity, gender, as well as additionally important dimensions of citizenship and age. A review of the literature shows the proliferation of these low-wage service occupations as associated with the redevelopment trajectory of New Orleans, as well as broader trends in the service economy. This paper then discusses how such a case study in the context of the “New New Orleans” can help to pose further research questions about occupational crowding, including methodologies for measurement, the relationship between crowding patterns and changes in service work, and how specific local and regional policy and redevelopment decisions shape crowding patterns.