Categorical Distinctions and Claims Making: Opportunity, Actions, and Returns from Wage Negotiation

• In Event: 4207 - Work and the Workplace

Abstract

Relational inequality theory foregrounds claims-making as the fundamental interactional mechanism generating material inequalities in workplaces. We examine wage negotiations as a specific instance of claims making. We expect that the capacity to make a claim is first a function of the job, rather than the person, and that lower status actors—women, migrants, fixed term, part-time and unskilled employees—are all more likely to be in jobs where negotiation is not possible. At the same time these actors may be less likely to make claims even when in a job where negotiation is possible. Finally when low status actors make claims they may receive lower returns to negotiation. Analyses of wage negotiations by more than 2,400 German employees largely confirm these theoretical expectations, although the patterns of opportunity, action and returns vary by categorical status. All low status actors are more likely to be in jobs where negotiation is not possible. Women and people in lower class jobs are less likely to negotiate when given the opportunity. Women receive essentially no wage gains from negotiation while men’s earnings rise over a four year period by 10%. High class actors receive substantial wage benefits from negotiations (9%), while negotiations by low class actors are associated with wage declines of 7.5%. Our results provide substantial evidence that the advice to “lean-in” is insufficient to lower wage inequalities, as chances to make claims are also determined by structural, interactional and status evaluation processes.

Authors

• Peter Valet, University of Bamberg

• Carsten Sauer, Radboud University

• Safi Shams, University of Massachusetts-Amherst