Marc Doussard (UIUC) 

Talk:  What Comes after the Minimum Wage? The Struggle to Define Good Jobs After Fordism

Thursday, Sept. 10th

4 pm

Student Building 005, IU-Bloomington campus

Abstract: Low-wage jobs burden their holders with an extensive set of challenges in addition to inadequate hourly pay. Problems such as just-in-time scheduling, wage theft, and punitive time-and-attendance systems are commonplace in service-sector workplaces, and a staple of organizing campaigns. But they rarely feature in policy advocacy that remains focused on hourly pay rates. Drawing on interviews with striking fast-food workers in Chicago, I interrogate the discrepancy between the demand of a $15 minimum wage and the fuller suite of challenges in low-wage jobs. Wage-centric demands evoke the lost institutional and social arrangements of Fordism, promising a “family” wage or its contemporary analogue. Expanding organizing campaigns to address the fuller range of problems low-wage workers face requires shifting focus from the job to the household, and from current job holdings to long-term labor market trajectories.