The New Realities of Working-Class Jobs: Employer Practices, Worker Protections, and Employee Voice to Improve Job Quality

Julia R. Henly, Susan J. Lambert and Laura Dresser

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2021, vol. 695, issue 1, 208-224

Abstract: Over the last 40 years, changing employer practices have introduced instability and insecurity into working-class jobs, limiting the voice that employees have in their own employment and deteriorating overall job quality. In the decade after the Great Recession, slow but sustained economic growth benefitted workers in terms of generally higher employment and wages and reductions in involuntary part-time work. But we show that in that same period, other aspects of working-class jobs changed in ways that were less advantageous to workers. We examine recent, troubling trends in nonstandard employment, precarious scheduling practices, and employer labor violations, arguing that without the introduction of policies that rebalance terms of employment toward worker interests, an economic recovery alone is unlikely to reverse the overall trend toward reductions in job quality. We argue for federal-level policies that expand public insurance programs, establish minimum standards of job quality, and include avenues for collective employee voice in employment and public policy debates. Such strategies have potential to improve job quality.

Keywords: working-class jobs; employer practices; work schedules; labor flexibility practices; employee voice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00027162211028130 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:695:y:2021:i:1:p:208-224

DOI: 10.1177/00027162211028130

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().