Despotism on Demand

J. Wood Alex

Description

Despotism on Demand draws attention to the impact of flexible scheduling on managerial power and workplace control. When we understand paid work as a power relationship, argues Alex J. Wood, we see how the spread of precarious scheduling constitutes flexible despotism; a novel regime of control within the workplace.Wood believes that flexible despotism represents a new domain of inequality, in which the postindustrial working class increasingly suffers a scheduling nightmare. By investigating two of the largest retailers in the world he uncovers how control in the contemporary "flexible firm" is achieved through the insidious combination of "flexible discipline" and "schedule gifts." Flexible discipline provides managers with an arbitrary means by which to punish workers, but flexible scheduling also requires workers to actively win favor with managers in order to receive "schedule gifts": more or better hours. Wood concludes that the centrality of precarious scheduling to control means that for those at the bottom of the postindustrial labor market the future of work will increasingly be one of flexible despotism.

Sujets

• Industrial relations
• Human rights

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501748905
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

DESPOTISM ON DEMAND

DESPOTISM ONDEMAND How Power Operates in the Flexible Workplace

ALEX J. WOOd

ILR PRESS AN IMPRINT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2020 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Names: Wood, Alex J., 1985–author. Title: Despotism on demand : how power operates in the flexible workplace / Alex J. Wood. Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019032675 (print) | LCCN 2019032676 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501748875 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501748882 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501748899 (epub) | ISBN 9781501748905 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Flexible work arrangements—Great Britain. | Flexible work arrangements—United States. | Hours of labor—Great Britain. | Hours of labor—United States. | Precarious employment—Great Britain. | Precarious employment—United States. | Industrial relations—Great Britain. | Industrial relations—United States. Classification: LCC HD5109.2.G7 W64 2020 (print) | LCC HD5109.2.G7 (ebook) | DDC 331.25/7240941—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032675 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032676

In memory of William (Willy) Brown (22 April 1945–1 August 2019)—teacher and mentor to many

Being humiliated, harassed, and abused by managers, subject to danger ous work conditions . . . such assaults on the dignity, safety, and autonomy of workers are of concern to egalitarians over and above issues of pay and benefits. Fundamentally, egalitarians care about eliminating oppressive so cial hierarchy, including relations of domination and subordination under which subordinates can be arbitrarily subject to humiliating and oppres sive conditions, and arbitrary restraints on their freedom. —Elizabeth S. Anderson, “Where Despots Rule,” interview inJacobin, June 29, 2017

Contents

Acknowledgments

Flexible Despotism: An Introduction

Par t 1 POWER AT WORK  1.  Internal States in the UK  2.  Internal States in the U.S.

Par t 2 THE DESPOTISM OF TIME  3.  Despotic Time in the UK: Overcoming Hegemonic Constraints  4.  Despotic Time in the U.S.: Undermining Worker Organization

Par t 3DYNAMICS OF WORK AND SPACES OF RESISTANCE THE  5.  The Dynamics of Work and Scheduling Gifts  6.  Limits of Control and Spaces of Resistance

Conclusions: Control in the TwentyFirst Century

Methodological Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

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52

75

90

102

120

134

147 157 165 173

Acknowledgments

Special thanks are due to Brendan Burchell and William Brown at the University of Cambridge for four years of help, support, and constructive criticism which have hugely strengthened this book. Thanks are also due to Michael Burawoy, Judy Wajcman, Huw Beynon, and Paul Edwards for showing interest in my ideas and taking the time to discuss my research. I would also like to thank Catherine Malone, David Sutcliffe, Christabel Buchanan, Torsten Geelan, Anna Wolmuth, James Taylor, Ian Buchanan, and Richard Armstrong, all of whom have read various drafts of the chapters that make up this book and have provided me with useful feedback and encouragement and, most of all, helped me clarify and com municate my ideas. I am grateful to Vili Lehdonvirta and the Oxford Internet Institute for providing me the time to finish this work. I would like to acknowl edge SAGE, which published two of my articles that parts of the Introduction and chapters 3, 4, and 5 draw and expand on. These two articles are:

Wood, Alex J. “Powerful Times: Flexible Discipline and Schedule Gifts at Work.”Work, Employment and Society32, no. 6 (2018): 1061–1077.

Wood, Alex J. “Flexible Scheduling, Degradation of Job Quality and Barri ers to Collective Voice.”Human Relations69, no. 10 (2016): 1989–2010.

I would also like to acknowledge Wiley, which published my article that parts of chapters 2 and 6 draw and expand on. This article is:

Wood, Alex J. “Networks of Injustice: Worker Mobilisation at Walmart.” Industrial Relations Journal46, no. 4 (2015): 259–274.

Finally, but most importantly, I am indebted to the workers and trade union ists who opened up their lives to me and gave me so much of their time. Without their generosity this book would consist of blank pages.

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