Week 8 Lectures

How do people resist?

This week’s questions:

1- What are the prevailing conditions for low-income workers in North
America today?
2- In what sense does management both impede resistance and participate
in it in the workplace?
3- How do call center workers resist difficult working conditions?
____________________________________________________________

Lecture 8a

What does resistance look like in the workplace?

Unions are organizations that represent employees in an official capacity as

the negotiator of collective agreements with employers. They negotiate for
better wages, benefits, vacation pay, better working conditions and things
that are not already provided for within the existing labor laws.
And union acts as well are the official negotiators within a job sector or
specific factory or plant. They exercise their power through the threat of
strike when that collective agreement ends. So that is through the workers
collectively withdrawing their labor as leverage against the employer to
attempt to halt the production process until they can come to some kind of
agreement or contract that could last for like three or four years.

The new normal?

The Old economy

● Full-time employment with benefits (drug, dental, workplace pension)

was the norm for a large segment of the population after WWII
 ● A social contract assumed the revenue generated by businesses
obligated them to provide a liveable wage

The new economy

● Increasing precarity is the new normal - part time, contract labor with
limited benefits

● Includes the 'gig economy' where often even minimum wage doesn't
apply like Uber and Lyft.

The Precariat

Precariat is sometimes used as a noun to refer to the class of people with

unstable low wage employment.
The precariat sounds a bit like that term mark used 150 years ago, what he
called it proletariat, which referred to the working class as well. But even
though they were low wage earners at the time, they at least had the
expectation of continuous employment with one employer.
“Like the Proletariat, but Precarious! (i.e., limited access to stable, full time
work) - e.g., gig economy workers

Every deprivation of the worker is a benefit to the employer

"That money [gained by the richest people] came from somewhere, didn't
it? It came out of my pocket & my kids' mouths" (Dodson, p. 29, quoting a
big rig truck driver)

Commodity fetishism

There is an interest for employers to obscure or distort the exploitative

nature of that relationship to undermine the idea that labor is the actual
source of value. As Marx would say. This is accomplished in the marketing
of products through what Marx called commodity fetishism. So this is where
the market value ascribed to commodities or things that we buy is
disguised so its value appears to come directly from the object itself rather
than from the labor that produced it.

● According to Marx: when the market value ascribed to commodities,

or things we can buy, is distorted so that its value appears to come
directly from object (rather than from the labor that produced it)

● It reinforces or naturalizes the status quo, in the interest of the ruling,

capitalist class
____________________________________________________________

Lecture 8b

What happens when managers 'sympathize’ with their low wage

employees?

For one, practically they need to cut their workers sometimes when family
obligations get in the way of work if they want any prospect of keeping
them from burning out or from leaving the job entirely. And then secondly,
there appears to be genuine kind of sympathy felt by these as often
middle-income managers towards their low wage employees that they can
identify with some of the struggles of maintaining a family all working it.

Managers ‘good deeds’

Dodson (2010) on the perspective of managers:

● Andrew, the fast-food restaurant manager: "...I give them food to take
home.... I actually order extra & send some home with them"

● Joachin, the food company manager: "I basically try to feed them
most of the time. I let them make meals for after their shifts. &... some
of the women, some of them are single moms, & when their kids
 come in after school, I feed them... pretty regularly, really. I don't think
they can feed their families on what they make here..."

Ehrenreich (2001) on the perspective of workers:

● "I suspect that the free breakfast he provided us represented the only
concession to the labor shortage [that is, rather than raising wages as
an incentive to stay] that [the boss] was prepared to make"
● "Similarly, the Wal-Mart where I worked was offering free doughnuts
once a week to any employees who could arrange to take their
breaks while the supply lasted"

Good deeds vs, better wages

Dodson, speaking with managers:

● Bea, the box-store manager: "Well, let's just say... we made some
mistakes with our prom dress orders last year. Too many were
ordered, some went back. It got pretty confusing." (implying she gave
the prom dress to the employee's daughter)
● Judy, a healthcare business manager: "So sometimes I just look the
other way... when, you know, there's an issue about... something."

Ehrenreich, as a worker:

● "many employers will offer almost anything-free meals, subsidized

transportation, store discounts-rather than raise wages. The reason
for this, in the words of one employer, is that such extras "can be
shed more easily". than wage increases when changes in the market
seem to make them unnecessary" (p. 204)

One important point in the last point is those extras are essentially things
that might otherwise go to waste anyway, so why not give them away?
In that sense, it seems to lessen the spirit of an abundance of generosity,
this conversion of waste into a gift that if it were an actual wage increase.
____________________________________________________________
Lecture 8c

Resistance beyond unions

Our chapter from woodcock starts from the premise that capitalism
produces a lot of working conditions that are unpleasant, unfulfilling, and
exploitative. But with the illusion that workers have a choice in a matter if
the world is their oyster and they can choose from any number of
employers they wish to be hired by. The author here is trying to make
sense of how workers in these kinds of jobs push back against the
structural unfairness of the labor market.

● Hodson on workplace resistance: "any individual or small-group act

intended to mitigate claims by management on workers or to advance
workers' claims against management" (Woodcock, 101)
● Workers less easily organized, in certain job sectors, find other ways
to resist unfair/unpleasant working conditions.

Emotional labor

● "Emotional labor draws on workers' personalities and emotions to

extract additional profit" (Woodcock, 103)
● It is one of the things 'withheld' when service A sector workers 'resist',
whether intentional or born Som and of frustration
● E.g., flight attendants on a 'smile strike'
●
Often, public facing work can really take an emotional toll on workers and it
is an aspect of their work that is both difficult to quantify and compensate
for.

Repertoire of resistance strategies:

Like the withholding of emotional labor, we discover a variety of different
strategies. The author here calls them Repertoire of resistance strategies,
unlike the strategy of going on a labor strike, as one might do as part of a
union. These strategies are much more subtle, furtive, and district. Things
you mostly try to get away with without the boss noticing in order to regain
some sense of control over your working conditions.
Those strategies are:
1- Slamin’(cheating)
2- Scammin’(work avoidance)
3- smokin’(absence)
4- Leavin’(resignation)

Scamin’ continued
In this chapter, scamin gets a lot more attention.
● Scammin' reflects opportunities that are opened up by technology
itself
● As Marx noted in the Communist Manifesto, techniques/technology
developed to increase productivity & control end up being the
platform for resistance itself.

Possible outcomes of resistance strategies:

I. No demand for worker control( because job is inherently bad; just
abandon it) example⇒ call center
II. Radically recognize work to be fulfilling and useful (e.g., by
eliminating bureaucracy, or converting from private to public)
example⇒ like term care homes
III. Workers take control of workplace & run it democratically (rather than
being subject to surplus layers of management) example⇒ vaccine
hunters