Working for Respect : : Community and Conflict at Walmart / / Adam Reich, Peter Bearman.

Walmart is the largest employer in the world. It encompasses nearly 1 percent of the entire American workforce-young adults, parents, formerly incarcerated people, retirees. Walmart also presents one possible future of work-Walmartism-in which the arbitrary authority of managers mixes with a hyperra...

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Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2018
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Place / Publishing House:New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2018]
©2018
Year of Publication:2018
Language:English
Series:The Middle Range Series
Online Access:
Physical Description:1 online resource :; 11 figures
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Description
Other title:Frontmatter --
Contents --
List of Figures --
Acknowledgments --
Introduction: The Real, Real Walmart --
1. Pathways --
2. The Shop Floor --
3. The Structure of Domination and Control --
4. Making Contact --
5. Social Ties and Social Change --
6. OUR Walmart on the Line --
7. Our Walmart --
Appendix: The Neural Signatures of Group Life --
Notes --
Bibliography --
Index
Summary:Walmart is the largest employer in the world. It encompasses nearly 1 percent of the entire American workforce-young adults, parents, formerly incarcerated people, retirees. Walmart also presents one possible future of work-Walmartism-in which the arbitrary authority of managers mixes with a hyperrationalized, centrally controlled bureaucracy in ways that curtail workers' ability to control their working conditions and their lives.In Working for Respect, Adam Reich and Peter Bearman examine how workers make sense of their jobs at places like Walmart in order to consider the nature of contemporary low-wage work, as well as the obstacles and opportunities such workplaces present as sites of struggle for social and economic justice. They describe the life experiences that lead workers to Walmart and analyze the dynamics of the shop floor. As a part of the project, Reich and Bearman matched student activists with a nascent association of current and former Walmart associates: the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart). They follow the efforts of this new partnership, considering the formation of collective identity and the relationship between social ties and social change. They show why traditional unions have been unable to organize service-sector workers in places like Walmart and offer provocative suggestions for new strategies and directions. Drawing on a wide array of methods, including participant-observation, oral history, big data, and the analysis of social networks, Working for Respect is a sophisticated reconsideration of the modern workplace that makes important contributions to debates on labor and inequality and the centrality of the experience of work in a fair economy.
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9780231547826
9783110606607
9783110604252
9783110603255
9783110604016
9783110603231
DOI:10.7312/reic18842
Access:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: Adam Reich, Peter Bearman.