The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It

“…is understood as a return to nineteenth-century market-based processes for managing and remunerating labor, described as the “great risk shift,” “fissured workplace,” “precariat,” and “Polanyian double-movement” (Hacker 2008; Kalleberg 2013, 2018; Standing 2011; Weil 2014; Beck 2000; Hatton 2011).”

“First, the job market has come to be dominated by freelancers (Weil, 2014).”

“Private equity firms also play a role in squeezing not only firms but also workers (Appelbaum & Batt, 2014) as they leverage lead firms who, in turn, are pushed to demand increased margins from their GSCs (Weil, 2014).”

“…is true even in advanced economies such as the US, where, according to a study by the US National Employment Law Project, ‘an employer would have to operate for 1,000 years to have even a 1 percent chance of being audited by Department of Labor inspectors’ (Lafer, 2013, p. 29; see also Weil, 2014).”

“…of external market increases in skill differentials and wage inequality that raise the costs of compensation compression within a single employer (Weil 2014); technological changes that have standardized work and reduced monitoring and 1 * Address/Affiliation for Katz: Department of Economics,…”

“9 Weil 2014.”

“…toward longer work weeks, proliferation of contingent work, diminished stable income, and the decline of the self-contained firm have introduced job insecurity, loss of employment benefits, underemployment, and a more transitory association between workers and managers (Weil, 2014; Howard, 2017).”

“Taken together, these trends have exerted significant pressures on warehousing costs and contributed to a structurally asymmetrical relationship between retailers and their logistics service providers (Newsome, 2010; Weil, 2014).”

“Specific deregulatory mechanisms include the “fissuring” of the Fordist firm (Weil 2014) and declining state capacity to enforce what laws do apply (Bernhardt, Spiller, and Polson 2013).”

“Sub-contracting arrangements can affect monitoring and enforcement by creating fissured workplaces.(50) Substandard housing increases workers’ susceptibility to disease and fatigue.”

“Research suggests that fragmented, or “fissured” [107], organizational structures can impact work-related outcomes such as wages, job quality, and compliance of labor standards [10 , 11 , 26 , 35 , 45].”

“…to receive employer-provided health insurance (Mishel et al. 2009) and de fi ned bene fi t pension plans (Shuey and O ’ Rand 2004), non-standard employment contracts are more common (Weil 2014), and many workers have non-standard (Presser 2003) and in fl exible work schedules (Kelly and Moen 2007).”

“Indicative of the breakdown in the standard employment relationship (Weil, 2017), gig work represents a recent iteration of casualised or non-standard labour arrangements similar to those observed in the temporary help industry – where employment is gained on a temporary basis through the use of an…”

“Uberization is the culmination of trends such as fissuring (Weil, 2014) and precarious work (Kalleberg, (2013), which describe the breakdown of stable employment and benefits, the shift of costs onto workers, and the increasing insecurity of labor.”

“The 20th century’s standard employment contract, with its promise of stable wages, benefits, and job security in return for workers’ loyalty and conformity, appears to be going the way of the dinosaurs (see, e.g., Standing 2011; Weil 2014).”

“In the US context, Weil (2014) demonstrated that businesses, and ‘lead firms’ in particular, have used subcontracting, franchising and supply-chain management to cut labour costs by ridding themselves of the responsibilities inherent in managing their workforces (see also Kalleberg 2013; Warhurst…”

“This argumentation finds support in recent publications (e.g., Koene, Galais, & Garsten, 2014; Neuner, 2013; Weil, 2014).”

“Alt-labor is a response not only to gaps in labor protections but also to a fissuring economy and rise in precarious forms of labor (Ashby, 2018; Weil, 2014), which have contributed to a massive decline in union membership (Franco, 2017; Milkman, 2013).”

“Since there is no credible assurance that high price automatically translates into high wage and high morale among contract workers (Rajeev 2009; Weil 2014), a low morale-low effort equilibrium thus ensues.”

“(Selberg 2013); challenges compounded by fragmented service delivery and staff relations (Weil 2014).”

“…à délaisser les activités dont la rentabilité est inférieure aux normes internationales exigées par les investisseurs et à externaliser la production de certains produits ou services susceptibles d’être fabriqués d’une manière plus compétitive par des entreprises sous-traitantes (Weil, 2014).”

“Employers have exploited this dispersion, hence the debate about the reduced nature of employee voice and influence (Weil 2014).”

“…dicho contexto se traduce por una recomposición de las relaciones de poder a escalas diferentes, desestabilizando y fragilizando las instituciones de relaciones laborales, que resultan inadaptadas frente a esta nueva realidad (Flecker y Meil, 2010 ; Meil, Tengblad y Docherty, 2009; Weil, 2014).”

“39 Many scholars relate this to the so-called ‘ fi ssuring ’ of the workplace, a term coined by David Weil 40 to describe a change in organisation models in which the undertakings increasingly out-source various activities and functions within the undertaking, but maintain substantial control over…”

“That indeterminacy might derive from a number of possible sources, such as exclusion from legal frameworks, and the fragmentation that is characteristic of what David Weil christened the ‘fissured’ workplace (Weil, 2014a, 2014b).”

“…employment standards violations have demonstrated that wage theft is especially pervasive across a swath of low-waged, racialized and feminized industries, including hospitality and restaurant work, care work and retail work (Fine and Gordon, 2010; Weil, 2014; Bobo, 2014; Vosko and Thomas, 2014).”

“…Lin, & Meyers, 2015), stagnating or declining real wages outside of the top 10 percent income strata (and the top 1 percent in particular) (Weil, 2014, p. 16; Zalewski & Whalen, 2010, p. 766; Wolff, 2003, p. 451), substantial growth in economic instability (Calomiris & Haber, 2014), and…”

“…se manifeste sous diverses formes, telles que la flexibilisation du travail (Jalette et Laroche, 2018), les fissurations du marché du travail (Weil, 2014), l’accroissement du travail dit atypique (Bernier et al., 2003), la multiplication des différents statuts d’emploi (Michaud, 2017),…”

“So far, this debate has largely focused on the notion that labor law categories are ill adapted to the organizational strategies that make what David Weil calls the ‘fissured workplace’ (Weil, 2014).”