There's Always Someone Lower On the Food Chain: Workers, Dichotomies, and Exploitation

My current fascination has been with wage theft, and I will be conducting a research project this summer on the subject. Lately, I have begun to look at wage theft as a structural phenomenon, one which comes out of an inherent identity of inferiority which is ascribed to "workers" because of their position on the wrong end of a dichotomy with "employers." It has been my argument in the past that the use of the term worker has an always already constructed and fully loaded meaning, therefore, even discussions of workers’ rights are framed within this preexisting conceptual hierarchy. Recently I have added a gendered component to this analysis and in my research this summer I hope to explore the ways in which the messages used to garner public support and funding for a local workers advocate organization (Workers Interfaith Network) play into two powerful cultural and ideological modes. On the one hand, WIN appeals to American masculine ideals of hard work and fair pay, and on the other hand, it appeals to other, more traditionally feminine, ideals such as shared humanity, dignity, and community. I want to argue that both of these cultural models form the basis for the culture and structure which allows for the existence of wage theft in the first place by lending themselves to underlying public views of workers as dependent participants in the economic hierarchy. In light of this component of my research, I found last night's reading very interesting. The author made the argument that many low wage service workers coped with the bad aspects and stigma associated with their jobs by emphasizing a powerful dichotomy between themselves as working people and others as the unemployed. It has been my experience working with WIN that many workers are intensely proud of their identities as workers, of their ability to do something with their hands, and to provide for themselves and their families. However, I wonder if this aspect of workers’ identities does not stem from, and reinforce, the very American fascination with hard work that I have begun to ironically connect to the devaluation of workers.  It is interesting to see the strong parallels between what these workers say about "lazy" unemployed people, and what I have heard many Rhodes students say about "lazy" or "stupid" service workers. In that same vain, it is interesting to view these workers statements in light of what I have theorized about the cultural hierarchy of the worker and the employer.