Relational Inequalities: An Organizational Approach

"These two authors are both organizational sociologists who have done what I think is the most pathbreaking work to reorient sociology to focus our understanding of inequality dynamics on organizations. It provides the real theoretical backbone for a lot of the arguments I’m making in the book, where I’m saying that instead of a focus on individual performance, or instead of a focus on occupational differences—the notion that some jobs are good, due to inherent features of those jobs, and some jobs are bad, and bad pay due to inherent features of those jobs—we should look much more at what’s happening within organizations because it’s within organizations that pay is being determined. At some point, someone in HR, or your manager, is determining that number on your paycheck. For non-academics that may seem obvious, but in academia, I think we were wed to a set of perspectives that didn’t have us focused on that as much as we should be, at what’s happening in organizations and what has changed over time to help us understand this broader rise of inequality. This is where I think David Weil’s work is so important, because I think, yes, there is a role for regulation and for a new set of incentives that would help change the boundaries of organizations, that would bring all these people who’ve been ‘fissured’ out, to use his term, back under the umbrella of the organizations for which they actually work. So David Weil, right after writing the book, was actually tapped by the Obama administration to serve in the Department of Labor . And he was really working on these issues of classification: that Nissan or Honda could have workers doing the same jobs as the Nissan workers, and Honda workers, yet be employed by a different agency. He wanted to raise important questions about whether that was right. They got quite far with the work, but then there was a change in administration and all of those efforts were halted. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . But I think that momentum is still there. You’ve seen some battles around the ride-sharing economy. You’ve seen these battles play out both in Europe , and also here in the United States, where there are efforts—at the state level, at least—to classify platform workers as employees, not as independent contractors, which, from the employer’s perspective, absolves them of providing the raft of protections enjoyed by workers who are classified as actual employees. These questions of classification speak to organizational dynamics. And here, I think, there’s a huge role for policymakers as they try to reshape the economy in a fairer direction. Yes, this a key insight, absolutely. Equal pay for equal work means equal pay for equal work, whether it’s distinctions based on gender, race, ethnicity, whatever. But this would mean that if you’re doing the same work as your colleague, it doesn’t matter if you’re employed by Amazon, or Google, or a staffing agency for Amazon or Google, you should enjoy the same pay for that work. Something that flies below the radar is that a majority of the staff at some of these tech giants are non-tech giant employees. Most Google workers don’t actually work for Google. Yes, absolutely. From the cafeteria workers up to some of the scientists working on the latest innovations in artificial intelligence . My first book, What Unions No Longer Do , contained a discussion about inequality trends. That came out in 2014. If you’d asked me back then, I was quite pessimistic. At least in the United States, neither of the major political parties were addressing this issue, and I think they were led astray by this foundational idea that pay dynamics are really driven by individual performance. So, if inequality is related to performance differentials, how do you address that? Well, you just need to get skills to the people who aren’t making a lot of money right now. Now there does seem to be real momentum behind other ideas, within and beyond the academy, including many in the policymaking community. We have a new administration in the US. The idea of a $15 minimum wage at the national level would have been laughed at in elite policy circles 10 years ago, across the ideological spectrum. And now it polls incredibly well, and implementation is a real possibility. So, I think there’s momentum behind efforts to raise the floor and possibly expand the middle. How to address the top of the distribution becomes much trickier. There, you have vested interests and real power behind current practice. A wealth tax was floated in some of the primary debates back in our presidential election, but the momentum behind that seems to have stalled. I think that as a fundamental issue of fairness, and if we’re going to do carry out a substantial expansion of the welfare state, and a reorganization of capitalism, which many people seem to be behind, higher taxes on wealthy individuals will be required, on those who have benefited the most from how our political and economic arrangements have changed over the last half century. They should pay what I would argue is their fair share. But that’s more of an uphill battle. That’s right. And they have a lot more resources. Absolutely."