Under COVID-19, low-wage service sector workers found themselves as essential workers vulnerable to intensified precarity. Based on in-depth interviews with a sample of 52 low-wage service workers interviewed first in Summer 2019 and then in the last two weeks of April 2020, we argue that COVID-19 has created new and heightened dimensions of precarity for low-wage workers. They experience (1) moments of what we call precarious stability, in which an increase in hours and predictable schedules is accompanied by unpredictability in the tasks workers are assigned, (2) increased threats to bodily integrity, and (3) experiences of fear and anxiety as background conditions of work and intensified emotional labor. The impacts of COVID-19 on workers’ lives warrant an expanded conceptualization of precarity that captures the dynamic and shifting nature of precarious stability and must incorporate workers’ limited control over their bodily integrity and emotions as core components of precarious working conditions.

A total of 16 percent of hourly workers and 36 percent of workers paid on some other basis experience unstable work schedules due to irregular, on-call, rotating, or split shifts, which negatively impact workers’ ability to manage family responsibilities, finances, and health. Primarily drawing on data from in-depth interviews conducted in Oregon in 2016, this study expands research on how workers navigate through “bad jobs” by exploring the ways in which they respond in an attempt to manage the individual impacts of precarious work arrangements. We found that workers respond to unpredictable scheduling in four ways: they acquiesce, self-advocate, quit, or directly oppose employers. Our findings highlight the “impossible choices” workers face as they negotiate prevalent, unpredictable work conditions, juggle work-life obligations, and struggle to remain employed. We conclude with fair week, work policy recommendations.

Ruth Milkman's latest book is a strong scholarly response to the "immigrant threat" narrative that has been central to U.S. politics in the last decades. In Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat, the distinguished labor and migration scholar has a clear goal: to reframe the conversation about migration and increased inequality in the United States, reversing the causal relation that blames migration for the U.S. working class's current perils.

Based on 98 in-depth interviews with workers and managers, the authors analyze the effectiveness of Oregon’s Fair Workweek Act, the first statewide scheduling legislation. Overall, findings show limited evidence of the law’s efficacy to improve workers’ schedules. The authors discuss three factors that are likely to explain this shortcoming: lack of adequate funding for education about the law and for enforcement, the inclusion of provisions that undermine the intent of fair scheduling legislation, and the ability of employers to interpret the law with substantial leeway. In this context, the authors consider the persistence of unpredictable scheduling practices a form of “flexible discipline,” even under Fair Workweek legislation. This article contributes to the literature on unpredictable scheduling by showing that in order to address this problem, legislation must include robust funding for education, implementation, and enforcement and must avoid options for workers to waive their rights to predictability pay, which as part of the act is intended to compensate employees for last-minute schedule changes.

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