Abstract
Worn Out is a provocative and lively account of fast-fashion retail work that is intended for a broad audience including academics, undergraduate students, retail workers, and activists. Consequently, its referencing is sparse and selective. Limitations in theory and rigor are offset by the book’s readability and relevance. Madison Van Oort addresses two main questions: What are the social forces shaping fast-fashion workers’ lives, and how can better jobs be created and inequalities reduced? Technology is key to answering these questions.
Based on qualitative research, conducted over several months between 2015 and 2017, the study concentrates on two, large, fast-fashion stores located near Times Square in New York City. Participant observation, together with interviews with workers in the stores and managers at industry conferences provide empirical evidence. In addition, the author attended meetings of the Retail Action Program (RAP) and Black Lives Matter (BLM), including interviews with organizers and activists.
The book comprises five chapters together with an Afterword (discussing the 2018–2020 post-fieldwork period) and an Appendix (reflecting on methodology). Chapter 1 explains fast-fashion, briefly situating this form of production in its historical context and highlighting its contemporary political-economic significance. The following chapter takes readers into the store, examining the digital scheduling of fast-fashion work characterized by unpredictability and indifference to workers’ well-being. Chapter 3 shows how service work loses much of its customer interactive quality as technology and the just-in-time production system demand constant attention to the movement and display of items, while sales become a purely transactional affair. In short, work becomes more physically and psychologically demanding. Chapter 4 details technological control, with biometric scanners and exception-spotting software to highlight worker misbehavior. Chapter 5 takes readers outside the workplace to where workers and other activists participate in two intersecting collective action initiatives: the labor-oriented RAP and the political BLM movement. Both seek to shape technology to workers’ advantage. In the final chapter, the author also considers the implications of technology for retail workers more generally and what might be done to advance their interests.
Following just-in-time principles, fast-fashion enables the demand for specific types of garments to be predicted on a real-time basis and then ordered to arrive as required. Fast-fashion relies on tight coordination, from materials ordering to factory production and then to store distribution. More clothing can be distributed faster, often at the cost of labor abuse in upstream factories and significant greenhouse gas emissions (pp. 16–17). In retail, fast-fashion has encouraged short-term work assignments and worker flexibility, that is, worker availability at any time and without a guarantee of minimum hours. Temporary, unpredictable work has contributed to low wages and anxiety in a workforce comprising a relatively high proportion of women and people of color (p. 22).
Chapter 2 describes algorithmic scheduling of work hours, demonstrating how software enables just-in-time labor by scheduling workers’ time to follow just-in-time inventory based on projected consumer demand (p. 36). We learn that scheduling ignores workers’ interests. Being expected to be available at management’s discretion means that uncertainty and exhaustion are constant features of retail sales work. Van Oort’s detailed description of the humiliation, stress, and time-wasting attendant upon her selection, hiring, and training highlights how management regards workers as pliable, anonymous, and disposable subjects (pp. 49–72).
Although customer service was officially prioritized, in practice, organizing garment availability and display meant there was little time for customer interaction. Management aimed to provide customers with “what they want, when they want it, at a price they can’t refuse” (p. 77). Van Oort uses her field notes to good effect in describing the labor process. Sales associates routinely maintained the flow of clothes between the stockroom and various sections of the sales floor. Even in the fitting room, work was reduced to logistics: regulating the flow of customers and garments and preparing items for restocking on the sales floor. Although senior workers criticized newer staff for working slowly, this antagonism was offset by worker solidarity in the stockroom, where an absence of closed-circuit TV, limited supervision, and workers’ control over music tracks enabled relative autonomy (p. 89). Resistance against management assumed the form of individual “work-arounds” and “short-cuts.” In the payment section, customers complained of long waiting times attributed to too-few cashiers, the slow pace of work, and deficient customer service skills. Overall, fast-fashion workers are shown to be worn down by a labor process that provides little autonomy and intrinsic satisfaction.
According to Van Oort, mystery shopper reports on worker–customer interactions have been replaced in fast-fashion stores by surveillance undertaken by “digital pinkertons” (p. 145). Workers must record workplace arrivals and departures using biometric scanners that provide detailed individual time use records, preventing co-workers clocking in for their buddies. The author’s fieldnotes reveal the technology’s fallibility, giving workers opportunities to game the system. Meanwhile, time use becomes a site of struggle as workers covertly seek control over this resource. Surveillance cameras monitor worker behavior while computer programs highlight individual performance outside the norm (e.g., regarding time use and garment returns) (pp. 134–35). The success of these “exception-based” reporting systems is unclear, but, according to Van Oort, their presence, together with biometric cameras, contribute to worker anxiety and related avoidance strategies. Unsurprisingly, labor turnover is high, reinforcing management’s propensity to view workers as potential criminals rather than as dedicated employees.
Workers also fight back collectively, although the extent of such participation is not explored. The RAP is a worker center that aims to organize workers, provide training, and promote technology for the benefit of workers. Van Oort describes her participation in disrupting the National Retail Federation’s 2016 largest annual event, the “Big Show,” and her involvement in BLM protests against racial discrimination and inequality. She argues that retailers and the police use similar technology to maintain normal business activity, and in some cases, retailers generate and share social media data with police departments targeting alleged criminals, including BLM protesters (pp. 170–72).
Van Oort concludes that the tendency to model fast-fashion retailing on factory labor requires a critical, combative perspective that supports legislative change along the lines of recent Californian and New York City legislation aimed at raising retail workers’ wages and making jobs more stable and predictable. In addition, closer co-operation between labor and citizenship organizations is needed to ensure that technology is used for, rather than against, workers. At the individual level, Van Oort favors a “let’s try everything” approach that includes radical clothing design, for example, visors that prevent facial recognition and more conventional practices that restrict constant consumption and ameliorate worker exploitation (p. 189).
Although Worn Out skips too lightly over important aspects of labor in fast-fashion—the extent to which demographics impact workers’ experience of technology and work more generally—the study provides a valuable close-up of fast-fashion work and related problems. Worn Out will be especially useful in classes and seminars aimed at exploring how power determines the use and consequences of technology at work.