Workers in Poverty: An Insight Into Informal Workers Around the World

Abstract

Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) present compelling arguments on a moral/humanistic need for I-O psychologists to consider workers that are living and working in deep poverty. Their case nicely shifts focus to large percentages of global workers who heretofore have only been represented minimally in the scholarly discourse in our field. I would like to accomplish two goals in this commentary. First, I would like to present a brief historical perspective on why industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology's focus has been on POSH workers. Second, I will provide conceptual extensions to Gloss et al.’s (2017) focal article by presenting some insights into the world of informal workers.

“Our fair trade coffee tastes better”: It might, but under what conditions?

“…Longer supply chains may be more exploitative, simply because more people are taking a "cut" of the profit, increasing tension and reducing slack resources at the producer end of the chain; and thereby decreasing the consumer's taste experience. The advantage of shorter supply chains is illustrated by a Fair Trade system supply chain program that transported clay cups from rural artisans to coffee shops in cities and urban areas, thus enabling living wages for their primary producers by reducing the number of middle-personnel and resulting in a better coffee experience, organoleptically and morally, for coffee consumers in Chicago (Saxena, 2017(Saxena, , 2019.…”