Changing Contours of Work. Stephen Sweet
cars. She worked there for two decades (earning as much as $25 an hour), as the plant slowly shrank around her and the union that represented workers grew steadily weaker.
In the early 2000s, a series of corporate and legal maneuvers resulted in the plant becoming part of GM’s Delphi Automotive Systems, which was then spun off as a separate company. Delphi eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2005 in an attempt to get out of its union contract and wind the company down. Like many workers who had lived through the company’s gradual shrinkage, Tammy did not fully foresee Delphi’s decision to close or sell most of its units and eliminate two-thirds of its workforce. Some workers at Tammy’s plant would be kept on—but with dramatic cuts to their wages and benefits and likely eventual job loss. The alternative was to accept a lump-sum buyout but also lose most of their pensions. Tammy accepted the buyout, determined to do something else with her life.
Tammy invested some of the money she received from the buyout with a relative who was speculating in real estate. At first, she received good returns on her investment but later lost most of her money when the real estate bubble of the late 2000s collapsed. She had to beg her relative to return a small portion of her investment so that she could keep her small house. She went back to school to earn a bachelor’s degree and was approached by a professional organizer who was looking to hire community organizers to help combat the effects of Youngstown’s decline. Tammy was passionate about her city and determined to do something, so she got the job. Since then, she has worked on several surveys of her city, which made her even more aware of the decline brought about by deindustrialization. Even as the fracking boom began to create jobs in the region, Tammy could see that most of the people like her in Youngstown were not finding jobs and were being passed by. By comparison, she considered herself lucky.
Note: Based on The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer, 2013, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Exhibit 1.3 Emily: A Contract Worker Navigates Insecure Employment
Emily is in her late forties and markets herself as a freelance editor/proofreader. While at one time she was a “regular employee,” the job that she previously held vanished when her employer relocated. Her path to becoming a contract worker was not an intended career path. It was a means of rescuing a career that was dislodged.
Emily currently works as an editor with two different employers, a large law firm and small publishing company. She is not considered to be a career employee at either of these companies, does not have a private office, and shares a cramped workspace with another employee. She is not included in many of the office social functions, and her level of involvement with other regular employees is quite restricted. Nonetheless, her job as a freelancer provides her considerably more flexibility than her coworkers, and this is something that she values. And, because she is skilled at her work, her compensation is comparable to what the regular employees make.
Because the terms of Emily’s employment rest on her employers’ interest in hiring her for subsequent work, she keeps watch for opportunities. She believes that her type of job, based on short-term agreements between employees and their employers, is the wave of the future. While she feels secure in knowing how to do her work, she has a constant sense of insecurity in that she does not know what the future holds for her.
Note: Based on Freelancing Expertise: Contract Professionals in the New Economy (pp. 2–3) by Debra Osnowitz, 2010, Ithaca, New York: ILR Press.
Exhibit 1.4 Rain: A Chinese Immigrant Finds Work in the American Food Service Industry
Rain is twenty-nine years old and has been in the United States for five years. Born and raised in a village in rural China, Rain says that he came to the United States to escape religious persecution (but it is possible that this story is for the sake of his visa application). His journey to the United States was expedited by a “snakehead,” whom Rain paid the equivalent of $70,000 to arrange transport and needed documents. Rain was initially flown from China to Mexico. Like immigrants from South America, he was escorted to the U.S. border and told to “run.” Later he was picked up by an associate of the snakehead, who transported him from Houston to New York.
Within Chinatown in New York, Rain was connected to a network of opportunities to work in Chinese restaurants located throughout the United States. In fact, family run Chinese restaurants outnumber McDonald’s restaurants in small towns. Moving from town to town, Rain learned to cook Chinese food to suit the American tongue, with its heavier emphasis on sweetness. It was in the United States that he tasted his first egg roll. Currently, Rain lives in a house owned by the restaurant owner, along with five of his coworkers, all of whom are Chinese immigrants.
Rain’s treatment in each restaurant depends very much on the ownership, but a constant is an expectation to put in long hours and labor quickly. He commonly works six-day weeks, and his twelve-hour days begin with chopping vegetables and end with cleaning the kitchen. On the whole, he is thankful for the long hours, because that means more money for him and more money to send home. If an owner is too demanding, Rain’s solution is to return to New York, find another restaurant in another small town, and begin again.
He is working hard to pay off his debt and is sending money home, but he has no immediate plans to return to China because his income in the United States is far greater than he could earn in his hometown or in any of the new factories in the urban centers. However, he does feel isolated and lonely. His biggest worry is securing U.S. citizenship.
Note: Based on “The Kitchen Network: America’s Underground Chinese Restaurant Workers” by Lauren Hilgers, 2014, The New Yorker, October 13, 2014.
Exhibit 1.5 Kavita: A Young Indian Woman Navigates Night Work and Call Center Employment
Kavita is a twenty-two-year-old woman who works in a call center in Bangalore, India. Owing to the time difference that separates Bangalore from the United States, Kavita works a night shift so that her schedule fits American workday rhythms. She has learned to suppress her Indian accent, has familiarized herself with American vernacular, and takes pride in her work. Her job is very demanding, as she has to understand the scripts that guide interactions, quickly understand client needs, and sometimes diffuse hostile encounters from frustrated customers. As soon as one client hangs up the phone, another call is funneled into Kavita’s headset and she begins anew.
The night shift that Kavita works carries with it perils. One concern is the very real physical danger that confronts women in Indian society when darkness falls. Even simple necessities, such as going to the restroom outside of the home, carry with them such risks that women try their best to avert physical need. Another concern is the stigma associated with night work, which is traditionally associated with prostitution and other morally suspect behaviors.
Call center work compares favorably to other industries in India, but it is demanding and competition for jobs is fierce. Any position might have as many as five hundred applicants. Kavita sought work at the call center because she wanted the freedoms that her income provides. Many of her coworkers labor because of more desperate financial needs. With her $300/month income she has been able to rent a small apartment and recently hired a maid.
Kavita sees call center work as a stepping-stone in her life but is not inclined to think about the next steps yet. She does heed (to a great extent) her parents’ warning that her conduct needs to reflect favorably on family and to be mindful of how women should act if they are to find a good spouse. Living in modern India, Kavita can potentially form a relationship that might develop into a “love marriage” but is pressured by her parents to have an arranged marriage. By virtue of working in the global economy, Kavita and her coworkers are challenging many conventional ways of defining women’s place in Indian society.
Note: Based on Working the Night Shift: Women in India’s Call Center Industry by Reena Patel, 2010, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Exhibit 1.6 Mike: A Disadvantaged Youth Enters a Life of Crime