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Wage theft – the nonpayment of employees’ wages and benefits by employers – is a violation of national, state, and local labour standards, yet it is prevalent in the low-wage labour market of the United States. Building upon the recent increase in attention to the wage theft problem through advocacy, policy, and research efforts, we contextualise the problem within the country’s deregulated neoliberal labour market. We then propose a conceptual framework to demonstrate how the problem occurs when the price of labour standards violation is low due to lax enforcement, and there is a high price of compliance due to ambiguous and increasingly outdated labour standards. We further evaluate extant federal, state, and local policy initiatives designed to curb wage theft by modernising outdated labour standards and strengthening their enforcement. Finally, we propose future research agendas, such as examining the effects of fissured employment relationships and the enforcement efforts of state and local anti-wage theft laws, to guide the development of effective policy interventions. JEL Codes: J5, J8
Precarious employment is on the rise in the United States. Research suggests that young workers are more likely than older workers to be in precarious work. Yet much remains unknown regarding the precarious nature of employment experienced by young workers, despite evidence of the importance of this period for long-term employment opportunities. To address this gap in knowledge, this study used a nationally-representative, longitudinal dataset to create a multi-dimensional measure of precarious employment, and assessed precarious employment trajectories over time for young women and men. Findings revealed that, while there were significant shifts in levels of precarity over time for both males and females, patterns differed by gender. Overall, higher percentages of females than males remained concentrated at the semi-precarious level over time—meaning that they did not move further into or out of precarious employment—while higher percentages of males became either much more precarious or much less precarious over time. These findings challenge the common assumption that young people generally move out of low-wage or otherwise “bad” jobs over time, and suggest that there is a need for additional attention to gendered patterns in job quality among young people. Social workers have an important role to play in helping young people enter non-precarious jobs, and in engaging in advocacy to improve the quality of jobs available.
This article provides an analysis of laws across all 193 United Nations countries that protect workers from discrimination in access to employer‐provided training. We assessed the overall level of protection and the characteristics most commonly protected, as well as the extent of variation across geographic regions and country income. Overall, 60% of countries were found to offer specific protections from discrimination in access to training for at least one of the seven protected characteristics, which was significantly less than the percentage of countries offering protections from discriminatory hiring or terminations. Gender was the most commonly protected characteristic, whereas sexual orientation was least commonly protected. These findings suggest that employer‐provided training is less well‐protected from discrimination when compared with other aspects of employment and that there is variation in protection across socio‐demographic characteristics and geographic regions. Additional legislation may be needed to ensure equitable access to training for all workers.
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