Front-Line Workers in the Global Service Economy

Overshadowed and Overstretched in the Fast Fashion World

Giovanna Fullin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032005584
• eBook ISBN: 9781000399172
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Walking around the commercial streets of New York, San Francisco, Milan, London, or Paris and looking at the succession of multinational chain stores' windows, you can easily forget what country you are in. However, if you hear the small talk among the employees, you hear very different stories. In New York, a 30-year-old woman is worried because she does not know if she will work enough hours to make a living the following week—whereas, in Milan, a mother of the same age knows she will work 20 hours a week but is concerned about whether her contract will be renewed at the end of the following month.

Following three years of fieldwork, which included 100 in-depth interviews with front-line retail workers and unionists in New York City and Milan, Front-Line Workers in the Global Service Economy investigates both the lived experiences of salespersons in the "fast fashion" industry—a retail sector made of large chains of stores selling fashion garments at low prices—and the possibilities of collective action and structured forms of resistance to these global trends. In the face of economic globalization and vigorous managerial efforts to minimize labor costs and to standardize the retail experience, mass fashion workers' stories tell us how strong the pressure toward work devaluation in low-skilled service sectors can be, and how devastating its effects are on the workers themselves.

1
Macro Trends and Micro Features of Retail Work

1.1 The Analytical Framework

As explained in the introduction, the structure of this book is interlinked with the analytical framework that guided my research. It aimed at considering jointly the role of the institutions, the labor market conditions and the labor supply, on the one hand, and their impact on the workers’ lived experiences on the other. Figure 1.1 shows the interplay between several factors and highlights the guiding thread of the analysis (see references to the book’s chapters). Before explaining the role that each dimension plays in the analysis, it is worth making clear the three peculiar and innovative features of my approach.

FIGURE 1.1 The analytical framework

First, institutions’ impact is usually studied by adopting a macro-perspective and focusing on objective dimensions of job quality, whereas this research aims at enriching this analysis with the investigation of workers’ lived experiences in their jobs. What I am interested in capturing, through the comparison between Milan and New York, is the impact of institutional differences—in terms of labor market regulations and industrial relations—on workers’ experiences. Indeed, if the institutional settings matter, they must necessarily result in differences not only regarding job instability or pay levels but also workers’ lives. On this, I follow the incitement of C. Wright Mills:

know that the human meaning of public issues must be revealed by relating them to personal troubles—and to the problems of the individual life. Know that the problems of social science, when adequately formulated, must include both troubles and issues, both biography and history, and the range of their intricate relations. Within that range the life of the individual and the making of societies occur; and within that range the sociological imagination has its chance to make a difference in the quality of human life in our time. (Mills, 1959, p. 226)

So, instead of limiting my study to the analysis of data on fixed-term and part-time employment, or on job tenure, I interviewed the workers, asking them how they lived such working conditions, which aspects of their jobs they considered problematic, and which instead were a source of satisfaction. Comparing the stories of salespersons working for the same chain stores in two cities located in two countries that are quite different in terms of institutional settings allows us to truly understand to what extent such diversity affects workers’ individual experiences. In other words, this book aims at investigating the relations between the macro-institutional level, which is at the bottom of Figure 1.1, with the job quality and the subjective aspects of job satisfaction and dignity at work, which are at the top of the figure.

The second specificity of my approach is the attention devoted to the role played by the labor supply available for specific jobs, which, together with the institutional setting, affects and partially shapes companies’ human resources management strategies. The analytical framework was inspired by the classic contribution of Maurice and Sellier, triggering a “societal approach” that considers the complex interaction between institutions—i.e., labor market regulation via laws and collective bargaining and regulation of labor supply via schooling and care arrangements—firms, and managerial practices. Their approach has been recently re-proposed by a comparative work promoted by the Russel Sage Foundation (Askenazy, Berry, Carré, Prunier-Poulmaire, & Tilly, 2012; Carré & Tilly, 2010, 2017; Gautié & Schmitt, 2010) with promising results, and it will also shape this Italy/US comparison. In particular, I will focus my attention on the availability of youths and women, seeking part-time and temporary jobs. This labor supply is of particular relevance in retail (Askenazy et al., 2012; Bosch & Lehndorff, 2005) and, even more, in the mass fashion subsector, where the use of part-time is accompanied by high turnover.

The human resources management practices and managers’ attitudes are included in the framework as mediating factors between labor market conditions and job quality and contents. Indeed, on the one side, human resources management practices are shaped by the parent company’s directives and limited by institutional settings. Yet, they are influenced on the other side by the characteristics of the labor supply available in the local context and the level of unemployment and job mobility. Managers’ attitudes and strategies can affect the objective dimension of job quality, such as job instability or working schedules, as well as workers’ subjective level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the job.

The characteristics of the workforce, as well as the conditions of the labor market, also influence the expectations of individuals and therefore make certain working conditions to be considered acceptable or very unsatisfactory. However, international analyses merely compare data on short-term employment, labor turnover, or job tenure in different countries, without considering how these features relate to the characteristics of the workforce employed in the sector and to their expectations.

Finally, this book, and this is its third specificity, also aims at offering an insight into the experiences of workers in a sector that has not been the subject of much research. The sociological literature on retail frequently focused on food retail or the paradigmatic case of Walmart, while mass fashion clothing retail has been studied only seldom, and not from an international comparative perspective, despite the high degree of internationalization of such a sector. However, studying salespersons of mass fashion chain stores is interesting for several reasons. They perform low-skilled, high-standardized, and routinized jobs that entail interactions with customers. In contrast with the literature on subjective experiences of front-line workers, this book aims at analyzing them by considering at the same time how such experiences are influenced by the working conditions and by the characteristics of the workforce employed in the sector.

Returning for one last time to Figure 1.1 and following the arrows from the bottom upward, the meaning of the proposed analysis should now be clearer. Institutional factors are at the bottom and the upward arrows indicate how they impact on job quality both directly—affecting levels of wages, job precariousness, and industrial relations—and indirectly, through human resources management strategies, managers’ attitude, and workers expectations, which are, in turn, influenced by labor market conditions and linked to the characteristics of the labor force. The double-line boxes identify the dimensions on which we expect the differences between Italy and the US to be bigger. On the other hand, beside the international comparison, this book has also something to say about the lived working experiences per se, highlighting how low-skilled workers, in a sector where work is increasingly considered only a cost to be squeezed, protect their dignity at work.

While in the rest of the book, the analysis will develop according to the arrows’ direction (see references to individual chapters in Figure 1.1), starting from the institutional context and highlighting how it impacts the rest, this first chapter will unravel according to the opposite direction. It initially presents the dimensions of the work experiences that will be taken into consideration and then explains the hypotheses concerning the institutions’ role and the labor market conditions.

1.2 Job Quality, Job Satisfaction, and Dignity at Work

The analysis of lived working conditions will focus on several aspects that are mutually interrelated but, for analytical reasons, can be divided into two main dimensions: job quality, on the one hand, and satisfaction and dignity at work, on the other. The first concept—job quality—has been widely studied by adopting different definitions and approaches (Eurofound, 2017; Gallie, 2007; Kalleberg, 2013; Muñoz de Bustillo, Fernández-Macías, Esteve, & Antón, 2011). Notwithstanding the fact that people differ in their opinions about what is a good or a bad job, and consider it a source of self-actualization or simply a means to earn a living, there are certain characteristics that matter in defining the quality of a job. First, ergonomic features of the job need to be considered, as the posture required, and the characteristics of the workplace in terms of light, temperatureand noise can affect the lived experiences of workers. Second, we cannot disregard the economic compensation and its adequacy with respect to the effort required and to other similar jobs. A third dimension concerns job security and opportunities for career or advancement to better jobs.

The founding fathers of sociology highlighted the causes of workers’ alienation. Marx (1971) stressed the lack of workers’ control on the product and on the labor process as one crucial reason for alienation, while Weber explained how bureaucratic organizations can depersonalize and dehumanize work (Weber, 1978). As a consequence, they reminded us that autonomy and creativity are important for workers’ self-fulfillment and can be considered a relevant dimension of job quality. Linked to the level of autonomy is job complexity. An easy job requires less complex skills; it is often more monotonous and provides less reasons for satisfaction than a complex job. But complexity can cause stress if workers are not able or do not have the means to manage it (Edwards, 2005).

Another important dimension of job quality concerns the social environment (Eurofound, 2017). As stressed also by the study of Maria Jahoda on the consequences of job loss (Jahoda, 1982), social relations with colleagues and superiors are a relevant aspect for workers. And service jobs often also entail relations with customers, which play an important role too.

This book takes into consideration all the above-mentioned dimensions of job quality. Given the comparative aim of my research, it is worth identifying those dimensions that are more directly affected by the differences between Italy and the US in terms of labor market regulation and industrial relations, such as wage levels, job insecurity, and variability of work hours. On the other hand, globalization and standardization trends that are taking place in the sector make work contents, salespersons’ roles, and stores’ internal organization quite similar in New York and Milan. Therefore I expect to find more similarities than differences in job quality dimensions of autonomy, creativity, and control on the product and on the labor process.

Entering mass fashion stores as a customer and observing salespersons working, the first impression was that their jobs were strongly standardized, repetitive, and do not require complex skills. The self-service model that the stores are applying makes salespersons role quite marginal. But the analysis of workers’ lived experiences highlighted a partially different picture, as workers stressed the relevance of their social skills and the complexity of their job. Interactions with customers, in particular, even if short, provide often the opportunity to maintain some control over the labor process, reduce monotony, and add creativity to a standardized job.

Finally, it is worth considering that employment is one of the most important dimensions defining people’s social position and identity. As already stressed, salespersons’ job is a low-skilled service job and, for that reason, does not have a high social status, even if it is not one of the poorest and hardest jobs in the service sector. It entails less manual duties than cleaning or washing dishes in a restaurant and occurs in workplaces more comfortable and sparkling than a supermarket or a fast food chain.

Besides job quality, this research focused also on specific reasons for satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the job. Salespersons were asked to list the aspects of their jobs they like and dislike the most, in order to understand what dimensions of job quality matter to them and how the characteristics of the institutional settings affect (or do not affect) their lived working experiences. Their influence on the subjective dimension is both direct and mediated by workers’ expectations. On the one hand, poor working conditions and low wages can cause dissatisfaction and frustration; on the other hand, the way these factors are perceived depends on what jobs workers expect and usually find in the local labor market (Brown, Charlwood, & Spencer, 2012; Galvan, 2012; Reich & Bearman, 2018; Walters, 2005). Workers’ evaluations are defined against a benchmark of available alternatives, including a personal weighing of the importance of different aspects of work, which will also depend on the benchmark against which the evaluation is made. In particular, for people who have difficulties in finding a job, like young people in Milan, the satisfaction of being employed—whatever job they found—and the real satisfaction of the particular job they are doing overlap. Local labor market conditions play a major role in this regard. Moreover, in some cases, high reported job satisfaction may indicate making the best of a bad social situation, which Walters (Walters, 2005) terms “satisficing” as opposed to genuine satisfaction. Survey data do not allow disentangling these dimensions,¹ while qualitative interviews, like the ones that form the basis of this book, can provide more rich and complex evidence in this regard.

Given the pivotal role of personal expectations and available alternatives, the analysis of the reasons of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the job has to take into account personal characteristics of workers in terms of age, family condition, education level, gender, and race, because individual preferences and benchmarks about work are likely to differ according to these dimensions (Besen-Cassino, 2014; Kalleberg, 2013; Reich & Bearman, 2018). As stressed by Walters’ analysis of part-timers in the UK retail sector, in several cases the interviewed women appreciated their jobs, given their family conditions, but would have preferred to be employed in different and more meaningful jobs if they had the opportunity (Walters, 2005). The same could be said for workers doing retail jobs as a temporary occupation while looking for different ones (Huddelston, 2011) or studying (Besen-Cassino, 2014). It is worth bearing in mind that

jobs do not exist in a vacuum, but in a social context in which there are public and private institutions like welfare state, education system and family. Therefore, the impact of a given job characteristic on workers’ well-being depends on the interplay of that characteristic with the existing welfare arrangements and the supporting role played by the family. (Muñoz de Bustillo et al., 2011, p. 457)

Differences between the US and Italy in these aspects are likely to play an important role in affecting job satisfaction.

The above considerations clearly highlight the complexity and ambiguity of the concept of job satisfaction. Nevertheless, as stressed by Brown and colleagues (Brown et al., 2012), even if job satisfaction does not capture job quality, it does capture workers’ cognitive evaluations of their jobs, which impact on their personal well-being and can explain their decisions and their behavior in the labor market.

On this concern, it is also worth referring to the concept of work dignity, which widens the analysis of job satisfaction (Bolton, 2013; Hodgkiss, 2016; Hodson, 2001). According to Hodson, dignity is “the ability to establish a sense of self-worth and self-respect and to appreciate the respect of others” (Hodson, 2001, p. 3) and the workplace is a key arena for the realization of human dignity. While people can be satisfied also with a non-demanding but repetitive job, dignity at work also requires a sense of fulfillment. And fulfillment at work entails more than having a positive attitude toward a job; it entails a realization of one’s human potential. With my in-depth interviews, I aimed at investigating also these aspects.

Focusing on dignity at work, it is worth considering also managers’ and supervisors’ behaviors and attitudes toward their employees. It is not just about the social relations in the workplace, mentioned by Eurofound as a dimension of job quality (Eurofound, 2017). Job management can affect the workers’ dignity, thereby greatly influencing their experiences (Bolton, 2013; Hodson, 2001). Thanks to his analysis of several organizational ethnographies on different workplaces, Hodson identified six aspects of abusive management practices that infringe on the dignity of workers: direct physical and verbal abuse, inappropriate firings, absence of job security, frequent layoffs, reductions in hours, and an absence of on-the-job training. Apart from the first, unfortunately all the other five aspects were cited by the salespersons of mass fashion clothing stores as elements of discontent with the job and will be analyzed in the following chapters. In particular, my fieldwork showed that salespersons feel devaluated by their supervisors. According to Hodson, this fact, together with capricious layoffs, was perceived by workers as a sign of disrespect that affects, first of all, their dignity (Hodson, 2001): “when someone is acutely aware that they are a commodity to be used pri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Macro Trends and Micro Features of Retail Work
• 2 Two Different Institutional Settings
• 3 Who Are Mass Fashion Workers and What Do They Do?
• 4 Do Institutions Matter in Workers’ Lived Experiences?
• 5 Working with Customers
• 6 Representing Retail Work, Anti-Union Strategies, and Worker Centers
• 7 Conclusions
• Appendix
• References
• Index