Low-Wage America: How Employers Are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace
Edited by Eileen Appelbaum, Annette Bernhardt and Richard J. Murnane
What kinds of choices are employers making as they confront globalization, deregulation and new information technology? This collection of case studies of 25 industries shows that many employers lower wages and cut benefits, but every industry has some firms that take the high road.
- One key finding is that wages are stagnant and employers are increasing workloads even in industries like hotels and hospitals where globalization, deregulation and information technology have very little effect on the jobs of front-line workers.
- Employers are often caught in a race to the bottom, and it is difficult for individual companies to be decent employers.
- New labor market institutions can make a difference, even in industries as diverse as hotels, hospitals and sock manufacturing. Some employers then can pay a living wage, provide benefits like health insurance, and otherwise give their workers the basics for a decent life - and still make decent profits.
One example is the hotel industry. Housekeepers in high-end hotels in San Francisco or New York or Los Vegas make $13 per hour and have job security and health insurance. In many other cities, housekeepers doing identical work in similar hotels make $6 to $7 per hour, have no health insurance and no security and must do half again as many rooms. Yet the profit margins for the owners in both cases are about equal. The difference is that in the major cities, hotel unions are strong and have been able to forge partnerships with the hotel owners to figure out together ways to maintain job standards, and decent jobs mean lower turnover, which reduces employer costs.
Government and business and workers need to team up - to level the playing field so that all companies can provide decent wages and benefits and still remain competitive in a globalizing economy.
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Eileen
Appelbaum (eappelba@rci.rutgers.edu)
is professor and director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers
University.
Annette Bernhardt is a sociologist and senior policy analyst at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
Richard J. Murnane is the Thompson Professor of Education and Society at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
