Regulating informality: Worker centers and collective action in day‐labor markets

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-160
Author(s):  
Nik Theodore
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Day Labor ◽  
Worker Centers

From economic integration to socioeconomic inclusion: day labor worker centers as social intermediaries

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Anne Visser ◽  
Nik Theodore ◽  
Edwin J. Melendez ◽  
Abel Valenzuela
Keyword(s):  
Economic Integration ◽  
Day Labor ◽  
Worker Centers

“Outside the Pyramid”: Clerical Work, Corporate Affirmative Action, and Working Women’s Barriers to Upward Mobility

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison L. Elias
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Administrative Support ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Working Women ◽  
Internal Labor Markets ◽  
Clerical Work

Abstract:Although women have made tremendous gains at work, a striking degree of sex segregation still exists. For a generation of women who were working in low-paying, administrative support positions during the promising era of Title VII, affirmative action did not offer upward mobility. In the 1970s, as employers and regulators began implementing affirmative action amid the gendered structure of internal labor markets, women who were already in clerical roles remained outside the managerial pipeline. Women in 9to5, the National Association of Working Women, sought to bridge the gap between female-dominated clerical and male-dominated managerial ladders using collective action. Yet business and government did not enforce affirmative action such that the clustering of women in low-paid clerical positions constituted discrimination on the basis of sex. Work experience on the clerical ladder remains inadequate training for positions on the managerial ladder.

Synchronizing Meanings and Other Day Laborer Organizing Strategies

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Camou
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Important Task ◽  
Day Laborers ◽  
Day Labor ◽  
Labor Organizing ◽  
Urban Street ◽  
Material Reward ◽  
Day Laborer ◽  
Day Labor Center ◽  
Strategic Consideration

Day labor centers have been proposed as a mechanism for curbing the exploitation and abusive conditions faced by immigrant day laborers soliciting work from urban street corners. Transitioning day laborers from street corners to centers is certainly not easy, and it involves active organizing. This article examines efforts to organize day laborers toward a day labor center in Denver, Colorado. The author finds that a key strategic consideration in organizing day laborers toward centers involves questions about the meanings and purposes of day labor centers. In Denver, organizers and day laborers held different notions of what centers should be and should mean, with organizers emphasizing solidarity and collective action and day laborers emphasizing material reward. Strategically, reconciling collectivist and materialist views of day labor centers is an important task of day labor organizing.

scholarly journals Day labor, informality and vulnerability in South Africa and the United States

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 807-823 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nik Theodore ◽  
Derick Blaauw ◽  
Catherina Schenck ◽  
Abel Valenzuela Jr. ◽  
Christie Schoeman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Emerging Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Day Laborers ◽  
Day Labor ◽  
Content Type ◽  
National Surveys ◽  
The Usa

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare conditions in informal day-labor markets in South Africa and the USA to better understand the nature of worker vulnerabilities in this market, as well as the economic conditions that have contributed to the growth of day labor. The conclusion considers interventions that are underway in the two countries to improve conditions in day-labor markets. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on national surveys of day laborers in South Africa and the USA. A random sample of day laborers seeking work at informal hiring sites was undertaken in each country. The paper presents key findings, compares conditions in South Africa and the USA, and analyzes the relationship between economic change, labor-market dynamics, and worker vulnerability. Findings – Day-labor work is characterized by low pay, hazardous conditions on the job, and tremendous income insecurity. The day-labor markets in South Africa and the USA perform somewhat different functions within regional economies. Within South Africa, day labor can be regarded as a survival strategy. The growth of day labor in South Africa over the past decade is a manifestation of a formal labor market that is incapable of absorbing the structurally unemployed. Here, day labor is the employment of last resort, allowing workers to subsist on the fringes of the mainstream economy, but offering few pathways into the formal sector. In the USA, the day labor workforce is a largely undocumented-immigrant workforce. Workers seek work at informal hiring sites, maintaining a tenuous hold on jobs in the construction industry. There is evidence of some mobility into more stable and better paying employment. Practical implications – This paper documents the need for policies and programs to increase employment opportunities for day laborers and to better enforce labor standards in the informal economy. Originality/value – This paper summarizes findings from the only two national surveys of day laborers that have been conducted, and it compares for the first time the dynamic within growing day-labor markets in a developed- and emerging-market context.

Organizing the Fight against Precarity

2019 ◽  
pp. 231-252
Author(s):  
Paul Apostolidis
Keyword(s):  
Direct Action ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Policy Advocacy ◽  
Day Labor ◽  
Worker Centers ◽  
Labor Organizations ◽  
Job Seeking ◽  
Working People ◽  
Local Citizenship ◽  
The City

How have day labor organizations responded to predicaments of precarity highlighted by workers’ generative themes, and what prospects for a broader antiprecarity movement of working people do these responses suggest? Day labor groups’ direct action and policy advocacy against deportation challenge exceptionally precaritizing forces aimed at migrants that are associated with desperate responsibility, dangerous work, and job-seeking on the corner. Furthermore, by connecting worker centers with corners and sponsoring ecologically oriented demonstrations of unauthorized local citizenship, day labor organizations contest neoliberal mobility-governance and recompose urban time-spaces as domains of cosmopolitan solidarity. Critical-popular analysis of workers’ themes also yields a composite conception of antiprecarity politics that emphasizes the fight for time, the struggle for the city, and the refusal of work. Demanding worker centers for all working people would invigorate such politics by proliferating experiences of conscientizaçao and opportunities for critical-popular inquiry, in ways complementing the demand for a basic income.

Ideas and Leaders in Contentious Politics: One Parish Priest in El Salvador's Popular Movement

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 76-101
Author(s):  
PETER M. SANCHEZ
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Parish Priest ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Resource Mobilisation ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis paper examines the actions of one Salvadorean priest – Padre David Rodríguez – in one parish – Tecoluca – to underscore the importance of religious leadership in the rise of El Salvador's contentious political movement that began in the early 1970s, when the guerrilla organisations were only just beginning to develop. Catholic leaders became engaged in promoting contentious politics, however, only after the Church had experienced an ideological conversion, commonly referred to as liberation theology. A focus on one priest, in one parish, allows for generalisation, since scores of priests, nuns and lay workers in El Salvador followed the same injustice frame and tactics that generated extensive political mobilisation throughout the country. While structural conditions, collective action and resource mobilisation are undoubtedly necessary, the case of religious leaders in El Salvador suggests that ideas and leadership are of vital importance for the rise of contentious politics at a particular historical moment.

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