Employers Gone Rogue: Explaining Industry Variation in Violations of Workplace Laws

Abstract

Drawing on an innovative, representative survey of workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, the authors analyze minimum wage, overtime, and other workplace violations in the low-wage labor market. They document significant interindustry variation in both the mix and the prevalence of violations, and they show that while differences in workforce composition are important in explaining that variation, differences in job and employer characteristics play the stronger role. The authors suggest that industry noncompliance rates are shaped by both product market and institutional characteristics, which together interact with labor supply and the current weak penalty and enforcement regime in the United States. They close with a research agenda for this still-young field, framing noncompliance as an emerging strategy in the reorganization of work and production at the bottom of the U.S. labor market.O ver the past thirty years, controlling labor costs has been a central motivation for low-wage employers to experiment with a range of strategies to reorganize work and production. Researchers have documented the growth of alternative staffing models, various forms of subcontracting and outsourcing, the dismantling of internal labor markets, the cutting or outright abandonment of health and pension benefits, and the adoption of nonstandard pay systems (

The Socioeconomic Incorporation of Immigrant and Native‐born Day Labourers in Tshwane, South Africa

“…In response to constrained opportunities in the mainstream economy, many unauthorized immigrants turn to informal employment, despite the hardships they may experience as a result of the low wages and job instability that characterize this segment of the economy. There is ample evidence from Europe and the United States to substantiate such claims (see Bernhardt et al., ; Doussard, ; Harrison and Lloyd, ; Theodore et al., ; Wills et al., ; Woolfson et al., ).…”

The Impact of Franchising on Labor Standards Compliance

“…One particularly troubling feature of low-wage work is pervasive noncompliance with basic labor standards such as violations of minimum wage requirements and overtime pay (bobo 2012;bernhardt, spiller, and Theodore 2013;weil 2014). A recent survey of low-wage workers in three major metropolitan cities in the United states estimated that 26% of workers were paid less than minimum wage; that 75% of workers eligible for overtime did not receive the compensation they were entitled; and that 71% of workers who…”

Worlds of Work: Changing Landscapes of Production and the New Geographies of Opportunity

“…These, in turn, have combined to contribute to downward pressures on wages and working conditions in countries with large numbers of migrants, since undocumented migrants enter labor markets where their ability to exercise their rights is sharply circumscribed and where their occupational mobility is constrained. Faced with the need to defray the costs of migration, while at the same time eluding immigration enforcement authorities, undocumented immigrants have tended to enter low‐wage industries where employers have been emboldened to flagrantly violate basic labor standards, including wage laws, health and safety regulations, and other worker protections (Bernhardt et al ; Lewis et al ; Wills et al ; on downgraded domestic employment conditions as a catalyst for international migration, see Woolfson ).…”