Includes bibliographical references (pages 176-186) and index.
Contents:
What possibility of collective action. The mass fashion industry : low-cost salespersons selling low-cost fashion clothing ; Entering a store as a customer ; The research ; Comparing lived experiences of salespersons in New York and Milan ; What can mass fashion clothing retail tell us about low-skilled jobs in service societies? -- Macro trends and micro features of retail work. The analytical framework ; Job quality, job satisfaction, and dignity at work ; Worker-customer interactions ; Converging and diverging trends across countries -- Two different institutional settings. Labor market regulations ; Industrial relations ; Working arrangements ; Minimum wage and social benefits ; Mass fashion as specific observation point of institutions' role -- Who are mass fashion workers and what do they do? Salespersons at work in mass fashion stores ; Who are mass fashion workers and what labor market conditions do they face? -- Do institutions matter in workers' lived experiences? Employment instability ; Workers' expectations and satisfaction ; Feeling devaluated by managers -- Working with customers. Working with people is great ; Compensation mechanisms and redefinition of the meaning of work ; Customers as a negative aspect of the job ; Other important people in the workplaces : the colleagues ; Workers' expectations and adjustment to labor market conditions -- Representing retail work, anti-union strategies, and worker centers. The representation gap ; Filling the gap in the US: unions and worker centers ; Filling the gap in Italy : unions and industrial relations institutions -- Conclusions. Overshadowing the value of the labor force ; Can institutions limit the social cost of the devaluation of work: ; Regaining the meaning of work ; What possibility of collective action.
Summary:
"Walking around the commercial streets of New York, San Francisco, Milan, London, or Paris and looking at the succession of multinational chain stores' windows, you can easily forget what country you are in. However, if you hear the small talk among the employees you hear very different stories. In New York, a 30-year-old woman is worried because she does not know if she will work enough hours to make a living the following week - whereas, in Milan, a mother of the same age knows she will work 20 hours a week but is concerned about whether her contract will be renewed at the end of the following month. Following three years of field work which included 100 in-depth interviews with front-line retail workers and unionists in New York City and Milan, Front-Line Workers in the Global Service Economy investigates both the lived experiences of salespersons in the 'fast fashion' industry - a retail sector made of large chains of stores selling fashion garments at low prices - as well as the possibilities of collective action and structured forms of resistance to these global trends. In the face of economic globalization and vigorous managerial efforts to minimize labor costs and to standardize the retail experience, mass fashion workers' stories tell us how strong the pressure towards work devaluation in low skilled service sectors can be, and how devastating its effects are on the workers' themselves"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.