Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada (review)

In this compelling and accessible book, Dan Zuberi demonstrates the profound influence of social policy on the lives of the working poor and their families. Through a combination of in-depth interviews, participant observation, and social policy analysis, the study compares low-wage workers of two large hotel chains in Vancouver, British Columbia and Seattle, Washington. Zuberi finds that even though they work for the same multinational corporation, workers experience systematically different lives depending on the social policy regime under which they live and work. By highlighting the effects of labour, social, and health policy differences between Canada and the United States, a picture emerges of greater security, stability, and access to the many benefits of middle-class life for workers in Vancouver compared to workers in Seattle.

It is clear throughout the book that policy differences affect workers not only materially, but also psychologically through their effect on stress and quality of life. For example, a higher density of unionization in Vancouver creates a “union wage effect” that raises the wages and benefits of both unionized and non-unionized employees, but in addition, the interviews demonstrate that unionized employees in both Seattle and Vancouver experience the psychological benefits of better job security and better working conditions. Hotel employees in Vancouver rely more heavily on government programs during the off-season, economic downturns, and job loss; Seattle employees must rely more on family, personal resources, and working multiple jobs. Mandated paid vacation allows Vancouver employees a benefit typically only experienced by workers in the best American jobs.

One of the most familiar policy differences between the United States and Canada, access to health care, also plays a prominent role in Zuberi’s assessment, of cross-national differences among low-wage workers. Health insurance coverage has an important impact on financial security and psychological well-being. Beyond removing the risk that a health crisis will lead to a financial crisis, the decoupling of health insurance from paid employment allows workers in Canada the flexibility of exiting an unsatisfactory job and greater security during times of unemployment. Finally, the interviews suggest that greater public investments in quality of life, such as transit, parks, and urban development pay off by making hotel employees in Vancouver feel more positive about their neighbourhoods. However, it is difficult to disentangle differences in public infrastructure from the finding that, overall, hotel employees in Vancouver were able to live in relatively better neighbourhoods due to higher wages. In sum, rather than promoting a sense of dependence, as is often the argument against social welfare, the interviews give the distinct impression that these social policies allow hotel employees in Vancouver to build their own resources and to benefit from a greater sense of independence from exclusive reliance on family and friends in a time of need.

Although the reader comes away with the impression that Vancouver hotel employees experience a higher quality of life, Zuberi’s attempts to tap into this directly are less satisfying than what emerges from the other chapters. By examining the subjective perceptions of the employees regarding their relative position on an imagined socioeconomic ladder and their outlook on the future, Zuberi attempts to discover the “cumulative impacts of the interactions between the economy and government policy that shape the quality of life of low-wage workers.” On balance he finds little variation in the subjective perceptions of the participants but concludes that employees in Vancouver are somewhat more optimistic than those in Seattle and are less likely to identify as far below middle-class. Worker explanations of their perceived ranking in the income distribution suggest that for some, just having a job led to a sense of being close to the middle of the socioeconomic distribution, while for others, not owning a car placed them at the bottom of the distribution. These explanations, in conjunction with previous research demonstrating that most people identify...