Work in Britain's Informal Economy: Learning from Road‐Side Hand Car Washes

Abstract

The United Kingdom has over 10,000 hand car washes (HCWs). This article examines two research questions: what do HCWs reveal about the informalization of employment? and what is the prospect of regulation of them? Setting HCWs in a theoretical framework shows that they are part of a growing industry which is becoming an increasingly familiar and visible part of the economy, where control of labour costs is a key factor. Employers make a strategic choice to engage precarious and vulnerable, usually migrant, labour securing further competitive advantage at the cost of pronounced labour exploitation and long hours -the tendency towards informalization. Therein a low-cost business model disciplines competition to usurp higher productivity mechanized car washing.

Blurring boundaries: informal practices in formal employment in Ireland

“…Williams ), in our case, the informal practices are actually applied within formal employment. In such case, the examples discussed in our study include most of the features of type A and type B in Clark and Collings () typology. First of all, all these practices took place in formally established businesses; second, such businesses either operated within the legal framework of labour regulations or used ‘loopholes’ in the legislation, which allowed for further informalisation of employment.…”

“…In all these cases, informal activities are actually a part of the formal economy. In order to classify different forms of interaction between formal and informal employment, Clark and Colling () offered a useful typology of informal and formal economic activities, which is summarised in Table .…”

Abandoned spaces and technology displacement by labour: the case of hand car washes

“…Empirical work on hand car washes has reported in detail on the industrial relations and labour process aspects of this area of work and employment (Clark and Colling, ). As the current focus of research is on the derivation of the space occupied and self‐regulated by hand car washes there is no need to rehearse these findings but note that research took place between April 2014 and July 2017 and involved 46 hand car washes across two cities.…”

“…The visibility of these spaces which now appear open to occupation by new actors has the potential to illustrate the extent to which such actors are able to mobilise resources to effectively self‐regulate abandoned spaces. For example, hand car washes occupy abandoned spaces which were previously occupied by formally regulated businesses such as roadside petrol stations, public houses and tyre providers (Clark and Colling, ).…”

“…Therefore, theoretically, firms which deploy informalised business and employment policies operate in a low‐cost space informed by deregulation (Sassen, ), globalisation and associated economic restructuring (Cumbers et al ., : 105). Empirically in informalised work these contexts generate conflict between informalised workers and informalised business owners as a portion of the rental return to formalised capital is paid indirectly by informalised labour in the forms of exploitative terms and conditions of employment (Clark and Colling, ). So restructuring from ‘above’ inspired by globalisation and associated consolidation in particular sectors informs restructuring from ‘below’ in what new economic geography describes as self‐organising spatial principles (Klugman, ).…”