Work and Occupations

In Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, Arne Kalleberg examines the institutional changes in the United States that led to a polarization of income and job quality, a rising share of poor quality jobs, and the increasing precariousness of work across the educational spectrum. He proposes reversing these developments through a new social contract that builds on the design principles that underlie flexicurity policies in the Netherlands and Denmark—flexicurity with an American face. This article discusses the roots and promise of flexicurity to address the problems Kalleberg has identified. It also examines the limits to flexicurity and proposes additional policies to fulfill this promise.

In contrast to the general biases of orthodox economists, the jobs crisis in America is not inevitable or natural—and more important, does not contribute to more economic efficiency through lower wages or more productivity. It is the result of deliberate political policy choices the nation has made at least since the early 1980s, when productivity was rising on a secular basis at a slow rate. Also, the policy choices were made before the rise of very low-wage emerging markets like China’s. In sum, there has been a low-wage, high-unemployment policy regime in the rich world, and especially in the United States, for a generation.

Publication of Arne Kalleberg’s Good Jobs, Bad Jobs provides a welcome opportunity to re-examine the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that scholars bring to bear on precarious employment. An exemplar of what was once called the “new structuralism,” Kalleberg’s book provides a rigorous, multidimensional analysis of the changes impinging on job stability and security. Although it identifies a vitally important trend toward a growing polarization in the distribution of job rewards, it does so in ways that illustrate the limits of the genre of research to which it belongs. Constrained to view the subjective experience of work as merely dependent variables, the book cannot explore how social, political, and cultural processes have both shaped and legitimated the rise of precarious employment. Drawing on recent studies of the popular business press and other media representations, we document the rise of a culture of enterprise that has idealized the uncertainties that have come to grip the labor market, defining the latter as a site on which individual agency can freely unfold. Only by addressing the interplay between job structures and such discursive and political developments can we hope to understand the rise of labor market precarity, let alone expand workers’ rights to protection against market uncertainty.

In the search for policy solutions to rising inequality and precariousness in the United States, this essay argues for the central role of labor market regulation. It presents research and policy evidence for a three-pronged approach: (a) strengthening the floor of labor standards (wages, health and safety, and right to organize chief among them); (b) vigorously enforcing that floor; and (c) leveraging government contracting and grants to build a base of good jobs on top of that floor. The essay concludes that getting to scale in the current political climate will require ratcheting up from state and local policy campaigns to federal reform.

Good Jobs, Bad Jobs and other Russell Sage publications greatly strengthen our knowledge of both the causes of low-wage work and what is required to improve jobs and economic opportunities. These multidisciplinary studies complement basic principles with detailed comparative fieldwork which shows that globalized product and labor market competition does not create immutable tradeoffs between the quality and quantity of jobs; although it won’t be easy in the American context, broadly shared prosperity can be restored by a combination of value-added competitiveness policies, collective bargaining, minimum and prevailing wages, human resource development, labor market policies, and social supports.

Drawing on experiences in the global south and western Europe, this commentary identifies 3 focal points of precarity politics that a singular focus on the United States may have eclipsed: (a) In the global south, precariousness at work creates a crisis not just of job-quality but also of social reproduction; (b) precarious employment is often an integral part of the development strategies of states and international financial institutions, rather than the natural corporate response to global market competition; and (c) popular movements have insinuated alternative imaginations of work, rights, and life. These developments serve as the point of departure for any national, regional, or global policy deliberation.

In Good Jobs, Bad Jobs Arne Kalleberg provides an extremely useful portrait of job quality in America. This paper addresses the politics of job quality via a case study of weatherization jobs. Weatherization workers are typical of employees in many low wage jobs in America. The stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) substantially increased weatherization funding and a political struggle emerged over the quality of these jobs. We find that the variable strength of progressive coalitions, legislative politics and timing all contributed to the development of an uneven set of regulations at the federal and local level. Groups that are putative allies often worked at cross-purposes. More strikingly government at both the local and Federal level has been conservative and even timid about establishing job standards. There are also more positive lessons. Training standards are being formalized. This stands to benefit both homeowners and workers. While there have been conflicts, it is also true that interests that have been historically at each other’s throats notably unions and community groups–found a way to work together more constructively than in the past.

In this article, the author engages with the authors of the articles in this Special Issue by clarifying some aspects of the arguments in Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s to 2000s; addressing selected matters of controversy; and highlighting central policy challenges raised by the rise of polarized and precarious employment systems. The author organizes his comments around several key themes raised by these authors: The causes of changes in job quality; the polarization model; cross-national differences in precarious work; and policy recommendations and the politics of job quality.