Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market

5. “They’re Happy to Have a Job”: Midsize Supermarkets and Degraded Work

107  “They’re Happy to Have a Job” Midsize Supermarkets and Degraded Work Orthodox economic analysis insists that undocumented workers earn low wages due to the risk employers take in hiring them. Because U.S. law forbids hiring foreign nationals who do not possess visas and other required paperwork, employers cut their wage payments in order to set aside funds for potential fines, or so the story goes.1 The employers themselves know better. During the 2000s, high-profile Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on employers such as Perdue were the rare exception to the reality of nonenforcement in industries dominated by small workplaces. Rather than shrink from hiring undocumented workers owing to their precarious status, these firms race to employ them precisely because of their precarious legal status and the power that precariousness confers upon employers. The typical owner of a midsize supermarket in Chicago speaks freely and eagerly about his enthusiasm for undocumented workers, and with good reason. The basic workplace laws regulating wages, safety conditions , the pace of work, and employees’ remedies for dangerous and abusive working conditions are irregularly enforced at best for undocumented workers. Fast working and flexible, these employees deliver high output levels in exchange for low pay, with employers maintaining an unusually free hand to fire nonfavored workers, speed up the pace of work, cancel scheduled rest periods, intimidate employees into working while sick, and ignore safety standards. Two legal developments during the 2000s removed any doubt that the benefits of hiring undocumented workers exceeded the small penalties leveled on the few who were caught. The 2002 Supreme Court decision Hoffman Plastics Compounds Inc. v. NLRB, mentioned previously, rules that employers owe no compensation to undocumented workers illegally 108 · “THEY’RE HAPPY TO HAVE A JOB” dismissed in retaliation against union-organizing activities, even in cases when the employer knows the worker is undocumented (National Employment Law Project 2003). In effect, the ruling allows workers to exempt themselves from compliance with key portions of the National Labor Relations Act by hiring undocumented workers—a distinct advantage to firms eager to avoid unionization. Around the same time, the Social Security Administration further systematized this selective application of the law by initiating a policy of sending no-match letters advising employers that no recorded person matched the Social Security number provided by certain employees. The letters required no action by employers, most of whom were well aware of the problem. But they fashioned an easy pretext for dismissing workers involved in community or union organizing or who lodged complaints about wages, wage theft, and working conditions. Although no-match letters were halted by litigation in 2007 (and later resumed in 2011), they were a constant feature of workplaces during my research. The story of vulnerable workers and opportunistic employers unfortunately is a commonplace in research on low-wage labor markets (Milkman 2006). This fact makes the intersection of these familiar labor-sweating practices and other competitive strategies very important analytically. While comparatively low wages represent an essential element of the midsize supermarket’s competitive model, those low wages are rarely contested , even by workers seeking union representation. Instead, organizing campaigns in the industry focus on problems with working conditions. Those working conditions, the owners of these businesses make clear, play a significantly smaller role in competitive strategy than does the need to signal ethnic solidarity with the immigrant populations who account for the majority of the consumer market. Two embedded case studies of community–labor organizing efforts at competing employers illustrate the importance of appeals to ethnic solidarity and the impact those appeals have on worker-organizing campaigns built around familiar appeals to justice and fairness. Together, these embedded cases suggest that the segmentation of the low-wage labor market is the primary obstacle to community–labor organizing strategies, both in terms of employment practices and in terms of the cost-saving needs of the consumers who frequent midsize supermarkets. “THEY’RE HAPPY TO HAVE A JOB” · 109 How SupermarketsTarget Low-Income Populations The construction of a cultural identity supports retail entrepreneurs’ ability to appeal to immigrant households. Many of the elements of this identity are economic and speak as much to consumers’ status as households eking out a living at the bottom of the labor market as they do to their national origin. The standard cultural customizations in Chicago’s midsize supermarkets include not just music and hard-to-find cuts of...