Constructing Meaning from Monotony: Competency and Consent in a Fast Food Firm

• In Event: 470 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Paper Session. Striking for Justice in Fast Food, Retail, and Home Care: Implications for the Broader Labor Movement

Abstract

This ethnography of a fast food corporation and its franchises provides an account for why frontline fast food workers exert a high amount of labor for their employer. It also demonstrates how these workers come to find dignity in their work, despite the low pay, low prestige, and demanding nature of the job. Contrary to popular accounts, I find that the fast food labor process regularly provides frontline workers with “moments of autonomy” that facilitate their ability to make strategic choices about how they conduct their jobs. By regularly exercising discretion, workers participate in “competency games” that enable them to cast themselves as skilled workers in front of an audience of their peers, management, and customers. This recognition provides workers with intrinsic and material benefits that affect their wellbeing on the job and their economic livelihood. However, this system fosters lateral conflicts among workers and serves to legitimate what is otherwise an inherently unequal and exploitative labor process.

Author

• Brian Serafini, University of Washington