Working with Customers in the Retail Trade. Subjective and Objective Dimensions of Job Quality

• In Event: 413 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Refereed Roundtable Session. Table 01. Culture and Organizations
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 15. Emotion Work

Abstract

The retail sector is one of the largest low-wage industries, both in the US and Europe, providing jobs to the weakest components of the labor force, i.e. women, young people, immigrants and low educated people. A crucial aspect of the service jobs is that, differently from manufacturing, they entail worker-customer interactions. This project aims at analyzing the job quality in the retail trade focusing on these interactions and comparing the US and the Italian context.
The paper is based on statistical data and on interviews with workers, carried out in Milan and New York. The Italy/US comparison is very useful to highlight how and to what extent the different institutional contexts (labor legislation, unionization) influence the objective dimensions of job quality while the subjective dimensions might be affected by the different expectations that workers have about their job. In particular, the labor market conditions and the characteristics of the labor force employed in the sector are likely to influence the workers’ expectations while interactions with customers can be a source of satisfaction/dissatisfaction.
The approach of the paper is original for two reasons. First, the micro-perspective focused on individual work experiences would be enriched by the macro analysis of the institutional framework and of labor force characteristics, too often neglected by the literature on emotional labor. Second, the literature on job quality did not take into consideration the role of the worker-customer interactions, that instead are likely to have a strong influence on workers’ satisfaction in most of the service jobs.

Author

• Giovanna Fullin, University of Milano Bicocca