The Gloves-off Economy: Workplace Standards at the Bottom of America's Labor Market

Abstract

[Excerpt] The goal of this volume is to map the landscape of gloves-off workplace strategies, to connect them to the erosion of norms farther up in the labor market, to identify the workers most vulnerable to these practices, and finally and perhaps most importantly, to identify the ways that the floor under job standards can be rebuilt. In what follows, we first explore conceptual tools for analyzing evasions and breaches of workplace standards and then briefly review evidence about the scope of the problem. We next trace the historical trajectory that first led to the upgrading of workplace protections, then to the partial undoing of the protective web of laws and standards—using this narrative as well to introduce the contents of the volume. We close by considering strategies to "put the gloves back on" in order to re-regulate work.