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The growth of precarious work since the 1970s has emerged as a core contemporary
concern within politics, in the media, and among researchers. Uncertain and
unpredictable work contrasts with the relative security that characterized the three
decades following World War II. Precarious work constitutes a global challenge that has
a wide range of consequences cutting across many areas of concern to sociologists.
Hence, it is increasingly important to understand the new workplace arrangements that
generate precarious work and worker insecurity. A focus on employment relations forms
the foundation of theories of the institutions and structures that generate precarious
work and the cultural and individual factors that influence peoples responses to
uncertainty. Sociologists are well-positioned to explain, offer insight, and provide input
into public policy about such changes and the state of contemporary employment
relations.
ork is a core activity in society. It is central to individual identity, links individuals to each other, and locates people within the
stratification system. Perhaps only kin rela-
Changes in legal and other institutions mediated the effects of globalization and technology on work and employment relations (Gonos
1997). Unions continued to decline, weakening
a traditional source of institutional protections
for workers and severing the postwar businesslabor social contract. Government regulations that set minimum acceptable standards
in the labor market eroded, as did rules that
governed competition in product markets. Union
decline and deregulation reduced the countervailing forces that enabled workers to share in
the productivity gains that were made, and the
balance of power shifted all the more heavily
away from workers and toward employers.
The pervasive political changes associated
with Ronald Reagans election in 1980 accelerated business ascendancy and labor decline
and unleashed the freedom of firms and capitalists to pursue their unbridled interest.
Deregulation and reorganization of employment relations allowed for the massive accumulation of capital. Political policies in the
United Statessuch as the replacement of welfare with workfare programs in the mid-1990s
made it essential for people to participate in
paid employment, forcing many into low-wage
jobs. Ideological shifts centering on individualism and personal responsibility for work and
family life reinforced these structural changes;
the slogan youre on your own replaced the
notion of were all in this together (Bernstein
2006). This neoliberal revolution spread globally, emphasizing the centrality of markets and
market-driven solutions, privatization of government resources, and removal of government
protections.
The work process also changed, and in important ways, during this period. Increases in
knowledge-intensive work accompanied the
accelerated pace of technological innovation.
Service industries continued to expand as the
principal sources of jobs as the economy shifted from manufacturing-based, mass production
to an information-based economy organized
around flexible production (Piore and Sabel
1984).
These macro-level changes led employers to
seek greater flexibility in their relations with
workers. The neoliberal idea at the societal level
was mirrored by the greater role played by market forces within the workplace. The standard
employment relationship, in which workers
were assumed to work full-time for a particular employer at the employers place of work,
often progressing upward on job ladders within internal labor markets, was eroding (Cappelli
1999). Managements attempts to achieve flexibility led to various types of corporate restructuring, which in turn led to a growth in
precarious work and transformations in the
nature of the employment relationship
(Osterman 1999). This had, and continues to
have, far-reaching effects on all of society.
In addition to the changes discussed above,
the labor force became more diverse, with
marked increases in the number of women, nonwhite and immigrant workers, and older workers. The increase in immigration due to
globalization and the reduction of barriers to the
movement of people across national borders
has produced a greater surplus of labor today.
There are also growing gaps in earnings and
other indicators of labor market success between
people with different amounts of education.
THE CONTEXT OF PRECARITY AND
THE U.S. CASE
Until the end of the Great Depression in the
United States, most jobs were precarious and
most wages were unstable (Jacoby 1985).
Pensions and health insurance were almost
unheard of among the working classes before
the 1930s, and benefits (such as those associated with experiments in welfare capitalism in
the early part of the twentieth century) were
not presented as entitlements but depended on
workers docility (Edwards 1979).
The creation of a market-based economy in
the nineteenth century exacerbated precarity
during this period. In The Great Transformation
(1944), Polanyi describes the organizing principles of industrial society in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries in terms of a double
movement struggle. One side of the movement was guided by the principles of economic liberalism and laissez-faire that supported
the establishment and maintenance of free and
flexible markets (i.e., the f irst Great
Transformation). The other side was dominated by moves toward social protectionsprotections that were reactions to the psychological,
social, and ecological disruptions that unregulated markets imposed on peoples lives. The
long historical struggle over employment secu-
ly and satisfying career narratives. The attainment of a basic level of material satisfaction
freed workers to emphasize other concerns in
evaluating whether their jobs were good, such
as opportunities for meaning, challenge, and
other intrinsic rewards.
Laws enacted during the 1930s (such as those
related to wage and hours legislation, minimum
wage levels, and old-age and unemployment
insurance) dramatically increased the number of
workers whose jobs provided employment security along with living wages and benefits
(Amenta 1998). Employers power over the
terms of employment was restricted by workers
right to bargain collectively (granted by the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935), along with
increased government control over working
conditions and employment practices.
The establishment of a new social contract
between business and labor beginning in the
1930s solidified the growing security and economic gains of this period. The employment
relationship became more regulated over time,
THE
The prominence of examples such as automobile manufacturing and other core industries,
where precarity and instability have certainly
increased, might account for some of the differences between the perceived wisdom of managers and the results obtained from data on the
overall labor force.
The lack of availability of systematic, longitudinal data on the nature of employment relations and organizational practices also makes it
difficult to evaluate just how much change has
really occurred. The U.S. government and other
agencies, such as the International Labour
Organization, often collect data on phenomena
only after they are deemed problematic. For
example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
did not begin to count displaced workers until
the early 1980s and did not collect information
on nonstandard work arrangements and contingent work until 1995. Also, the Current
Population Surveys measure of employer tenure
changed in 1983, making it difficult to evaluate changes in job stability using this measure.
In addition, there is a paucity of longitudinal
data on organizations and employees that might
shed light on the mechanisms that are producing precarity and other changes in employment
relations.
Moreover, there is considerable measurement
error in many of the indicators of precarious
work. For example, worker-displacement data
issued biennially by the BLS almost certainly
undercount the number of people who lost their
jobs involuntarily. This is due to the wording of
the question, which was developed in the early
1980s to measure primarily blue-collar displacement.4 Uchitelle (2006) argues that a more
comprehensive indicator of whether people lost
their jobs involuntarily would likely produce a
biennial layoff rate averaging 7 to 8 percent of
full-time workers, rather than the 4.3 percent that
the BLS reported from 1981 through 2003.
Nevertheless, we can glean several pieces of
evidence that precarious work has indeed
increased in the United States.
1. DECLINE IN ATTACHMENT TO
EMPLOYERS
There has been a general decline in the average
length of time people spend with their employers. This varies by specific subgroups: womens
employer tenure has increased; while mens has
decreased (although tenure levels for women
remain substantially lower than those for men
in the private sector). The decline in employer
tenure is especially pronounced among older
white men, the group traditionally protected by
internal labor markets (Cappelli 2008; Farber
2008).
2. INCREASE IN LONG-TERM
UNEMPLOYMENT
Not having a job at all is, of course, the ultimate
form of work precarity.5 Long-term unemployed
Figure 3. Contingent Work in Academia: Trends in Faculty Status, 1975 to 2005 (all degree-granting institutions in the United States)
Source: U.S. Department of Education, IPEDS Fall Staff Survey, compiled by the American Association of University
Professors.
people physically, psychologically, and morally. The impact of uncertainty and insecurity on
individuals health and stress is well documented
(e.g., De Witte 1999). The experience of precarity also corrodes ones identity and promotes
anomie, as Sennett (1998) argues (see also
Uchitelle 2006).
Precarious work creates insecurity and otherwise affects families and households. The
number of two-earner households has risen in
the United States over the past several decades,
and these families have had to increase their
working time to keep up with their income
needs (Jacobs and Gerson 2004). Moreover,
uncertainty about the future may affect couples decision making on key things such as the
timing of marriage and children, as well as the
number of children to have (Coontz 2005).
Precarious work affects communities as well.
Precarious work may lead to a lack of social
engagement, indicated by declines in membership in voluntary associations and community
organizations, trust, and social capital more
generally (Putnam 2000). This may lead to
changes in the structure of communities, as
investigations of the effects of technology; studies of race, class, and the working poor; and
important studies of gender and work.9
Nevertheless, the study of issues such as precarious work and insecurity and their links to
social stratification, organizations, labor markets, and gender, race, and age has largely fallen through the cracks. In recent years,
sociologists have tended to take the employment relationship for granted and instead
focused on topics related to specific work structures such as occupations, industries, or workplaces; how people come to occupy different
kinds of jobs; and economic and status outcomes of work. These more limited foci miss the
sea changes occurring in the organization of
work and employment relations. Sociologists
have thus failed to consider the bigger picture
surrounding the forces behind the growth and
consequences of precarious work and insecurity.
Sociological theory and research is further
hindered by limitations in our conceptualizations
of work and the workplace: we need to return
to a unified study of work. Such an approach
would integrate studies of work, occupations,
and organizations along with labor markets,
political sociology, and insights from psychology and labor and behavioral economics.
The need for a more holistic approach to the
sociological study of work and its correlates
was recognized in the mid-1990s by the
Organizations, Occupations, and Work section
of the American Sociological Association, when
it changed its name from Organizations and
Occupations. But the need to link the study of
work to broader social phenomena is also central to many other sociological specialties,
including the ASA sections devoted to labor
and economic sociology and those focused on
gender, medical sociology, education, social
psychology, aging and the life course, international migration, and many others. My argu-
ments are thus directed at the discipline of sociology as a whole, not to a particular specialty
area.
THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP
A cohesive study of precarious work should
build on the general concept of employment
relations. These relations represent the dynamic social, economic, psychological, and political linkages between individual workers and
their employers (see Baron 1988). Employment
relations are the main means by which workers
in the United States have obtained rights and
benefits associated with work with respect to
labor law and social security. These relations differ in the relative power of employers and
employees to control tasks, negotiate the conditions of employment, and terminate a job.10
Employment relations are useful for studying
the connections between macro and micro levels of analysisa central feature of all sociology, not just the sociology of work (Abbott
1993)because they explicitly link individuals
to the workplaces and other institutions wherein work is structured. This brings together a
consideration of jobs and workplaces, on the one
hand, and individual workers, on the other.
Moreover, employment relations are embedded
in other social institutions, such as the family,
education, politics, and the healthcare sector.
They are also intimately related to gender, race,
age, and other demographic characteristics of
the labor force.
Changes in employment relations reflect the
transformations in managerial regimes and systems of control. The first Great Transformation
was characterized by despotic regimes of control that relied on physical and economic coercion. The harsh conditions associated with the
commodification of labor under market despotism led to a countermovement characterized
by the emergence of hegemonic forms of control that sought to elicit compliance and consent
(Burawoy 1979, 1983). The second Great
Transformation has seen a shift to hegemonic
despotism, whereby workers agree to make con-
cessions under threat of factory closures, capital flight, and other forms of precarity (Vallas
2006).
The more specific concept of employment
contract is particularly valuable for theorizing
about important aspects of employment relations. Most employment contracts are informal, incomplete, and shaped by social
institutions and norms in addition to their formal, explicit features. Research by economists
on incomplete contracts (e.g., Williamson 1985)
and psychologists on psychological contracts
between employers and employees (Rousseau
and Parks 1992) supplement sociological theories and provide bases for understanding the
interplay among social, economic, and psychological forces that create and maintain precarious work. Differences among types of
employment contracts can also be used to define
class positions, as Goldthorpe (2000) argues in
his conceptualization of service (professionals
and managers), labor (blue-collar), and intermediate employment contracts (see also
McGovern et al. 2008).
Employment contracts vary between transactional (short-term, market based) and relational (long-term, organizational) (see Dore
1973; MacNeil 1980). The double movement
between flexibility and security, described in
Figure 1, parallels to some extent the alternating predominance of market-based transactional
and organizational/relational contracts, respectively. A rise in the proportion of transactional
contracts will likely be associated with greater
precarity, as such contracts reduce organizational citizenship rights and allow market power
and status-based claims to become more important in local negotiations.
THE CHANGING ORGANIZATIONAL
CONTEXTS OF EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS
Employers sought to obtain greater flexibility by
adapting their workforces to meet growing competition and rapid change in two main ways.
Some took the high road by investing in their
workers through the use of relational employment contracts, creating more highly-skilled
jobs, and enhancing employees functional flexibility (i.e., employees ability to perform a variety of jobs and participate in decision making).
Other firmsfar too many in the United States
compared with other countries such as Germany
13
the United States and other advanced industrial countries has led more people to try to make a living in
the informal sector. The evidence on this is poor, as
it is hard to collect data on activities in the informal
sector for representative populations. Official measures of work generally emphasize paid work in the
formal sector of the economy. Qualitative studies
are likely to be especially valuable in studying work
in the informal economy.
15 See Ferman (1990) for a discussion of the informal or irregular economy.
16 For example, the International Labour
Organization (2006:1) estimates that in 2005, 84 percent of workers in South Asia, 58 percent in SouthEast Asia, 47 percent in East Asia .|.|. did not earn
enough to lift themselves and their families above the
US$2 a day per person poverty line. Moreover, the
ILO estimates that informal nonagricultural workers
make up 83 percent of the labor force in India and
78 percent in Indonesia (see also International Labour
Organization 2002). This scale of precarity differs
dramatically from that found in the formal economy
in the United States and other industrial countries.
17 This does not necessarily mean that standards of
living have declined in all countries. While informal
and precarious work is likely to be relatively high in
China, for example, it is also likely that security and
prosperity have improved in China over the past several decades.
identify precarity as a part of neoliberal globalization, involving greater capital mobility, the
search for flexibility and lower costs, privatization, and attacks on welfare provisions.
All industrial countries are faced with the
basic problem of balancing security (due to precarity) and flexibility (due to competition), the
two dimensions of Polanyis double movement. Countries have tried to solve this dilemma in different ways and their solutions provide
potential models for the United States. Some
countries adopted socialism to deal with the
uncertainties associated with rapid social
change. But by the late 1980s, this system was
discredited and capitalism became the dominant
economic form. The question now is what kinds
of institutional arrangements should be put in
place to reduce employers risks and employees
insecurity. The degree to which employers can
shift risks to employees depends on workers relative power and control. As Gallie (2007) and
his colleagues show (see also Burawoy 1983;
Fligstein and Byrkjeflot 1996), different
employment regimes (e.g., coordinated market
economies such as Germany and the
Scandinavian countries versus liberal market
economies such as the United States and the
United Kingdom) produce different solutions.
The relationship between precarity and economic and other forms of insecurity will vary
by country depending on its employment and
social protections, in addition to labor market
conditions. It is thus insecurity, more than
employment precarity, that varies among countries. This corresponds to the distinction between
job insecurity and labor market insecurity:18
workers in countries with better social protections are less likely to experience labor market
insecurity, although not necessarily less job
insecurity (Anderson and Pontusson 2007).
The Danish case illustrates that even with
increased precarity in the labor market, local
politics may produce post-market security. In
Denmark, security in any one job is relatively
low, but labor market security is fairly high
because unemployed workers are given a great
18 This
is similar to the distinction between cognitive job insecurity (the perception that one is likely to lose ones job in the near feature) and affective
job insecurity (whether one is worried about losing
the job) (Anderson and Pontusson 2007).
At this critical time, we need transformational leadership and big ideas to address the
large problems of precarity, insecurity, and other
major challenges facing our society. Bold political and economic initiatives are needed to
restore our sense of security and optimism for
the future. Our democracy needs to have a vigorous debate on the form that globalization
should take and on the policies and practices that
will enhance both the social good and our individual well-being.
Workers ability to exercise collective
agencythrough unions and other organizationsis essential for this debate to occur and
to create a countermovement to implement the
kinds of social investments and protections that
could address the problems raised by precarious
work. The success of such a countermovement
depends on political forces within the United
States being reconfigured so as to give workers
a real voice in decision making. Moreover, the
global nature of problems related to precarity
highlights the need for local solutions to be
linked to transnational unions, international
labor standards, and other global efforts (Silver
2003; Webster et al. 2008).
There is always the danger that Americans
will not reach a boiling point but will treat the
present era of precarity as an aberration, rather
than a structural reality that needs urgent attention (Schama 2002). Nevertheless, a clear understanding of the nature of the problem, combined
with the identification of feasible alternatives
and the political will to attain thembuttressed
by the collective power of workersoffer the
promise of generating an effective countermovement.
CONCLUSIONS
Precarious work is the dominant feature of the
social relations between employers and workers in the contemporary world. Studying precarious work is essential because it leads to
significant work-related (e.g., job insecurity,
economic insecurity, inequality) and nonworkrelated (e.g., individual, family, community)
consequences. By investigating the changing
nature of employment relations, we can frame
and address a very large range of social problems: gender and race disparities, civil rights and
economic injustice, family insecurity and
workfamily imbalances, identity politics,
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