Using a variety of novel data sources from the RegData project, we show that population levels and the amount of regulation are highly correlated across countries and time, and that more-populated US states, Australian states and Canadian provinces tend to be more heavily regulated than less-populated states and provinces. A doubling of population size is associated with a 22 to 33 per cent increase in regulation. This provides support for the theory that the fixed costs associated with regulating partly determine where and when regulations occur.
Almost one third of all who served in the US Senate between 1943 and 2020 ascended to their positions in that legislative body directly from the US House of Representatives. Thus, we model the legislative branch of the US government as an internal labour market, wherein members of the lower chamber seek ‘promotion’ (that is, election) to positions in the more prestigious upper chamber. This process includes the possibility that some US representatives are being promoted to positions in the Senate for which they are not competent, a situation referred to as the Peter Principle. Another possibility is that the ‘most ineffective’ US representatives are using this internal labour market to attain promotion to the Senate, an outcome that is referred to as the Dilbert Principle. Gallup polling data on the job approval by the public of the US Congress, along with absenteeism data on members of the US Senate, support both possibilities from our formal model.
Much is known about innovative union strategies to organise young workers, but little is known about how and why they self-organise outside of unions. Based on field research in Slovenia, we examine ‘next-generation welfare professionals’, a diverse group of students, unemployed graduates and precarious workers attempting to enter state-regulated, and relatively well unionised education and social protection professions. We argue that their self-organisation is a direct consequence of their precarious education-to-work transitions and consequent disembeddedness from the workplace and professional community. Their grievances stem from a mismatch between strict professional entry requirements and scarce paid internships, which lead to long unemployment spells, unsupportive active labour market schemes, and a fear of social exclusion. Their initial tactic was to establish communities from which a collective sense of injustices and self-organising emerged and they targeted policymakers with demands for sustainable government funded internships. Although their relations with established trade unions are not close, they do receive organisational support from the Trade Union Youth Plus that organises students, the unemployed and precarious graduates stuck in a transitional stage of ‘waithood’. Our findings show the need for unions to become more present within transitional zones that, are shaped by state policies.
This article analyses the dynamic interaction of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, and its epidemiological characteristics, with an expansive conception of the contact centre labour process, integrating the contact centres’ socially-constructed built environment with distinctive qualities of the social organisation of work. Based on an online survey conducted in April–May 2020 of 2,226 call handlers in, largely, the telecoms and financial services sectors, it provides compelling evidence of the risks facing workers from inter alia dense building occupancy, compromised social distancing, inadequate cleansing and sanitisation, heating ventilation and air conditioning systems and from the outcomes of management control systems. A crucial element in explaining widespread virus transmissibility lies in understanding how the broader political economy that produced the dominant mass production contact centre paradigm is intertwined with its ‘inner workings’, leading to a ‘business-as-usual’ default that prioritised value-generating service continuity at the expense of any precautionary principle. The article contributes additionally by re-affirming the utility of labour process theory.
From its beginnings, the sociology of work in South Africa has been preoccupied with three enduring themes: skill/deskilling, racism in the workplace, and Fordism/racial Fordism. With the advent of democracy in the 1990s there was a shift away from studying the labour process. We argue in this article that there has been a return to taking seriously the ways new forms of work in this postcolonial context pose new questions to the global study of work. A central preoccupation in the study of work has been the racialised reinscription of post-apartheid workplace orders, now in the context of new dynamics of externalisation and casualisation of employment. Another important theme is the shift away from studies of the formal sector workplace and toward the broader implications of the precarianisation and informalisation of labour. This focus coincided with the growth of new social movements by mostly unemployed (black) township residents around state services provision. This includes studies on working-class politics more broadly, with attention focusing on questions of organising and mobilising. More recently this interest in precarious labour has grown into studies of the gig economy, returning to earlier themes of technology and skill, as well as new forms of waged labour and wagelessness. We argue for the ongoing salience of labour process studies for understanding the specific issues of the securing and obscuring of value, and through the articulations of ‘racial capitalism’ offered by the long tradition of labour studies in South Africa.
This article examines the disconnection between promises of labour rights made at the international level and their inaccessibility to workers at the local level. Going beyond the concept of a global ‘governance gap’, it draws on a political economy perspective and focuses on the intersecting and competing roles of different forms of capital and the state, in curtailing workers’ paths to remedy in the global apparel (garment) value chain. A longitudinal case study of a campaign by Turkish garment workers, seeking remedy for lost earnings and severance payments due factory closure and wage theft, is the focus for analysis. The workplace is conceptualised as a key ‘arena of disarticulation’ in the apparel value chain, central in simultaneously embedding and dis-embedding commitments by brands, the state and employers, such that even wages for work done may be denied to workers with relative impunity. The article considers to what extent promises made in abstraction at the international level can hope to guarantee conditions at workplace level.
The aim of this paper is to extend discussion on subcontracted labour by focussing on the labour process and on the role of race and racialization within it. The existing literature has so far analysed the factors that have encouraged employer decisions to outsource labour, together with its effects on labour conditions and on industrial relations. Missing, however, has been any detailed analysis of the role of race and racialization processes, pivotal elements in the facilitation of subcontracting thereby accelerating the worsening of labour conditions.
Based on qualitative empirical research on the meat industry in Northern Italy, this article highlights how the processes of outsourcing and racialization intersect to support the segmentation of labour within the workplace. In particular, we argue that, through contracting out work to racialized groups of migrant workers, outsourcing has been both facilitated and legitimized. Furthermore, the presence of in-plant contractors has fostered the implementation of racializing practices, which in turn have bolstered workforce fragmentation on racial lines.
Notwithstanding this, our findings show that race can be a factor in the mobilization of subcontracted migrant labour through the production of pragmatic (racial) solidarities. These informal ties are a key component in the development of the everyday struggles and alliances that emerge within grass roots worker organisations as well as beyond their boundaries through hybrid forms of collective organisation.
Drawing on insights from Cedric Robinson’s theory of racial capitalism, we analyse black and Latinx blue-collar warehouse workers’ concerns about health and safety in Amazon’s warehouses as well as their collective efforts to organise and improve working conditions during the pandemic. The pandemic increased the demand for home-delivered e-commerce, bringing Amazon’s (directly employed) global workforce to over 1.2 million workers and making Amazon the second largest company in the US. Amazon’s business model, particularly its Amazon Prime programme, has further driven consumer demand for expedited, free shipping. Amazon’s logistics system puts pressure on warehouse workers, who are electronically surveilled, to work very quickly, resulting in high rates of turnover and injury on the job. In the US, this workforce is not unionised and is disproportionately black and Latinx. Workers of colour are also leading workplace organising efforts in various cities in the United States. Our research combines information from in-depth interviews with current and former Amazon warehouse workers in Inland Southern California, one of the largest hubs of Amazon warehouses in the world. We also analyse interviews with leading high-profile current and former black Amazon warehouse worker activists across US cities, affiliated with the Congress of Essential Workers, Amazonians United Chicagoland, the Awood Center, and Bay Area Amazonians who have demanded improvements in their working and safety conditions and faced retaliation, disciplining and/or firing during the pandemic.
Studies of how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2017 will affect charitable giving narrowly focus on the increase in the standard deduction. Based on these studies, the media and policy analysts warned that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would lead to a sharp decrease in charitable giving. However, these predictions did not fully account for some of the nuances in the tax code and the political economy of changes to tax policy. We explain that a richer analysis includes the political response of interest groups. Tax provisions other than changes to the standard deduction, such as an increase in the adjusted gross income limit, mean that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may change the composition of giving but that it is unlikely to have a large impact on overall giving. To supplement our analytical narrative, we present statistics on the pattern of charitable giving and estimate a predictive autoregressive model of overall charitable giving. The results show that the change in giving after the implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cannot be distinguished from zero. We conclude that misleading interpretations about the effect of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on overall charitable giving are due to the omission of political economy from the analysis.
