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\"Precarious Claims tells the human story behind the bureaucratic process of fighting for justice in the U.S. workplace. The global economy has fueled vast concentrations of wealth that have driven a demand for cheap and flexible labor. Workplace violations such as wage theft, unsafe work environments, and discrimination are widespread in low-wage industries such as retail, restaurants, hospitality, and domestic work, where jobs are often held by immigrants and other vulnerable workers. How and why do these workers, despite enormous barriers, come forward to seek justice, and what happens once they do? Based on extensive fieldwork in Northern California, Gleeson investigates the array of gatekeepers with whom workers must negotiate in the labor standards enforcement bureaucracy and, ultimately, the limited reach of formal legal protections. The author also tracks how workplace injustices--and the arduous process of contesting them--carry long-term effects on their everyday lives. Workers sometimes win, but their chances are precarious at best\"--Provided by publisher.

Life is unpredictable. Control over one's time is a crucial resource for managing that unpredictability, keeping a job, and raising a family. But the ability to control one's time, much like one's income, is determined to a significant degree by both gender and class. InUnequal Time, sociologists Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel explore the ways in which social inequalities permeate the workplace, shaping employees' capacities to determine both their work schedules and home lives, and exacerbating differences between men and women, and the economically privileged and disadvantaged. Unequal Timeinvestigates the interconnected schedules of four occupations in the health sector-professional-class doctors and nurses, and working-class EMTs and nursing assistants. While doctors and EMTs are predominantly men, nurses and nursing assistants are overwhelmingly women. In all four occupations, workers routinely confront schedule uncertainty, or unexpected events that interrupt, reduce, or extend work hours. Yet, Clawson and Gerstel show that members of these four occupations experience the effects of schedule uncertainty in very distinct ways, depending on both gender and class. But doctors, who are professional-class and largely male, have significant control over their schedules and tend to work long hours because they earn respect from their peers for doing so. By contrast, nursing assistants, who are primarily female and working-class, work demanding hours because they are most likely to be penalized for taking time off, no matter how valid the reasons. Unequal Timealso shows that the degree of control that workers hold over their schedules can either reinforce or challenge conventional gender roles. Male doctors frequently work overtime and rely heavily on their wives and domestic workers to care for their families. Female nurses are more likely to handle the bulk of their family responsibilities, and use the control they have over their work schedules in order to dedicate more time to home life. Surprisingly, Clawson and Gerstel find that in the working class occupations, workers frequently undermine traditional gender roles, with male EMTs taking significant time from work for child care and women nursing assistants working extra hours to financially support their children and other relatives. Employers often underscore these disparities by allowing their upper-tier workers (doctors and nurses) the flexibility that enables their gender roles at home, including, for example, reshaping their workplaces in order to accommodate female nurses' family obligations. Low-wage workers, on the other hand, are pressured to put their jobs before the unpredictable events they might face outside of work. Though we tend to consider personal and work scheduling an individual affair, Clawson and Gerstel present a provocative new case that time in the workplace also collective. A valuable resource for workers' advocates and policymakers alike,Unequal Timeexposes how social inequalities reverberate through a web of interconnected professional relationships and schedules, significantly shaping the lives of workers and their families.

What are the forces that will continue to shape the U.S. workforce and workplace over the next 10 to 15 years? With its eye on forming sound policy and helping stakeholders in the private and public sectors make informed decisions, the U.S. Department of Labor asked RAND to look at the future of work. The authors analyze trends in and the implications of shifting demographic patterns, the pace of technological change, and the path of economic globalization.

Motivated by the goal of understanding the labour conditions of workers in the videogame industry and their participatory power to create decent work, Not All Fun and Games is a critical examination of a global entertainment juggernaut with revenues that top film, television, and music production combined. Jobs in the industry are heralded as the vanguard of the new economy, governments offer lucrative tax credits to lure game studios to their regions, and game developers often express commitment and passion for their work. Yet, the industry is also known for its toxic workplaces. To understand these disparities and gain insight into twenty-first-century labour conditions, Marie-Josée Legault and Johanna Weststar have carried out a comprehensive mixed-methods study of the North American industry over the past fifteen years. They combine detailed survey data from thousands of game developers with over one hundred qualitative interviews to systematically reveal labour issues such as precarity, lack of workforce diversity, unpredictable schedules, unpaid overtime, low unionization rates, worker burnout, and significant pay inequality. Updating the theoretical concept of citizenship at work, the authors connect these labour issues to a fundamental lack of voice and representation in the workplace. They determine that videogame workers and others in contemporary project-based work environments lack agency in regulating their work and lack fundamental protections. Not All Fun and Games comprehensively documents conditions in the North American industry and highlights ways to counter workers' lack of voice and representation in their workplaces to better create healthy, equitable, and inclusive workplaces.

\"Though best known for aircraft and aerospace technology, Boeing has invested significant time and money in the construction and promotion of its corporate culture. Boeing's leaders, in keeping with the standard of traditional American social norms, began to promote a workplace culture of a white, heterosexual family model in the 1930s in an attempt to provide a sense of stability for their labor force during a series of enormous political, social, and economic disruptions. For both managers and workers, the construction of a masculine culture solved problems that technological innovation and profit could not. For managers it offered a way to govern employees and check the power of unions. For male employees, it offered a sense of stability that higher wages and the uncertainties of the airline market could not. For scholar Polly Reed Myers, Boeing's corporate culture offers a case study for understanding how labor and the workplace have evolved over the course of the twentieth century and into the present day amid the rise of neoliberal capitalism, globalization, and women's rights. Capitalist Family Values places the stories of Boeing's women at the center of the company's history, illuminating the policy shifts and economic changes, global events and modern controversies that have defined policy and workplace culture at Boeing. Using archival documents that include company newspapers, interviews, and historic court cases, Capitalist Family Values illustrates the changing concepts of corporate culture and the rhetoric of a \"workplace family\" in connection with economic, political, and social changes, providing insight into the operations of one of America's most powerful and influential firms\"-- Provided by publisher.

This unique study uncovers the lives and working conditions of a group of individuals who are usually rendered invisible on college campuses--the custodians who daily clean the offices, residence halls, bathrooms and public spaces. In doing so it also reveals universities' equally invisible practices that frequently contradict their espoused values of inclusion and equity, and their profession that those on the margins are important members of the campus community.This vivid ethnography is the fruit of the year's fieldwork that Peter Magolda's undertook at two universities. His purpose was to shine a light on a subculture that neither decision-makers nor campus community members know very much about, let alone understand the motivations and aspirations of those who perform this work; and to pose fundamental questions about the moral implications of the corporatization of higher education and its impact on its lowest paid and most vulnerable employees.Working alongside and learning about the lives of over thirty janitorial staff, Peter Magolda becomes privy to acts of courage, resilience, and inspiration, as well as witness to their work ethic, and to instances of intolerance, inequity, and injustices. We learn the stories of remarkable people, and about their daily concerns, their fears and contributions.Peter Magolda raises such questions as: Does the academy still believe wisdom is exclusive to particular professions or classes of people? Are universities really inclusive? Is addressing service workers' concerns part of the mission of higher education? If universities profess to value education, why make it difficult for those on the margins, such as custodians, to \"get educated.\"The book concludes with the research participants' and the author's reflections about ways that colleges can improve the lives of those whose underpaid and unremarked labor is so essential to the smooth running of their campuses.Appendices provide information about the research methodo

What do unions and environmental groups have to gain by working together and how do they overcome their differences? In Blue-Green Coalitions, Brian Mayer answers these questions by focusing on the role that health-related issues have played in creating a common ground between the two groups. By recognizing that the same toxics that cause workplace hazards escape into surrounding communities and the environment, workers and environmentalists are able to collaborate for the protection of all. Mayer examines three contemporary cases of successful labor-environmental alliances to demonstrate how health and safety issues are used to create durable and politically influential social movement coalitions: o Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, a coalition of environmental, labor, community, and public health organizations in Massachusetts that has developed a successful prevention-based approach to safe workplaces and a clean environment. o The Work Environment Council in New Jersey, which succeeded in passing the first statewide right-to-know law and concentrates on protecting citizens from the dangerous toxics generated by the state's chemical industries. o The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an organization that began in the 1980s fighting hazardous high-tech practices that were affecting the Valley residents and the high-tech industry's largely immigrant workforce. In Mayer's ethnographic accounts of the challenging work of bringing these blue-green coalitions together, it becomes clear that stereotypes about environmentalists and workers are largely irrelevant when thinking about who is at risk of exposure to dangerous toxic substances. Both movements share a common concern for protecting their members' health from toxic hazards that are by-products of the modern industrial economy. What do unions and environmental groups have to gain by working together and how do they overcome their differences? In Blue-Green Coalitions , Brian Mayer answers these questions by focusing on the role that health-related issues have played in creating a common ground between the two groups. By recognizing that the same toxics that cause workplace hazards escape into surrounding communities and the environment, workers and environmentalists are able to collaborate for the protection of all. Mayer examines three contemporary cases of successful labor-environmental alliances to demonstrate how health and safety issues are used to create durable and politically influential social movement coalitions: •Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, a coalition of environmental, labor, community, and public health organizations in Massachusetts that has developed a successful prevention-based approach to safe workplaces and a clean environment; •the Work Environment Council in New Jersey, which succeeded in passing the first statewide right-to-know law and concentrates on protecting citizens from the dangerous toxics generated by the state's chemical industries; •the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an organization that began in the 1980s fighting hazardous high-tech practices that were affecting the Valley residents and the high-tech industry's largely immigrant workforce. In Mayer's ethnographic accounts of the challenging work of bringing these blue-green coalitions together, it becomes clear that stereotypes about environmentalists and workers are largely irrelevant when thinking about who is at risk of exposure to dangerous toxic substances. Both movements share a common concern for protecting their members' health from toxic hazards that are by-products of the modern industrial economy.