Chris Tilly

“Soft” Skills and Race: An Investigation of Black Men's Employment Problems

We investigated changes in skill requirements and the effects of these changes on Black mens access to entry-level jobs, using open-ended interviews of managers at 56 firms in four industries. Managers reported that due to heightened competitive pressure, “soft skills”—particularly motivation and ability to interact well with customers and coworkers—are becoming increasingly important. Many managers view Black men as lacking in these soft skills. This helps to explain Black mens growing disadvantage in labor markets.

Half a job : bad and good part-time jobs in a changing labor market

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments 1. Half a Job Is Not Enough 2. Why Has Part-Time Employment Continued to Grow? 3. Two Theoretical Frameworks 4. Good and Bad Part-Time Jobs 5. Implications of the Distinction Between Good and Bad Part-Time Jobs 6. How Businesses Set the Level of Part-Time Employment 7. Cycles and Trends 8. The Case for New Policies Appendix: A Formal Model of the Cyclical Adjustment of Part-Time Employment in Noncyclical Industries Notes References Index

The impact of the economic crisis on international migration: a review:

The global economic crisis that exploded in 2008 dramatically changed the context for international migration. In that context, this review article addresses four related questions about migration from poor to rich countries. First, what has been the impact of the global recession on patterns of international migration? Second, to what extent do recession-induced changes in migration offer evidence in the debate among competing explanations of migration? Third, has the recession heightened the marginalization of migrants? Fourth, to what extent have nations responded to the recession by regulating migration in new ways? Findings include reduced migration flows in the recession, evidence for both economic and social explanations, little evidence in unemployment rates for further marginalization of migrants and limited movement toward added migration restrictions.

Under Construction: The Continuing Evolution of Job Structures in Call Centers

We study inbound call centers in fourteen businesses, using interview-based case studies. Contrary to the notion that U.S. businesses are eliminating job security and internal career tracks, these firms still incorporate these features in their job structures, and in many cases businesses that initially dismantled job and career structures ended up rebuilding them. The paper suggests a more nuanced account of changing job structures that incorporates market, institutional, and agency factors.

Wage Inequality Takes a Great U-Turn

Inequality among the annual wage and salary incomes of American workers declined steadily throughout the 1960s and well into the decade of the 1970s. Then, somewhere between 1975 and 1978, the distribution of wages and salaries took a sharp U-turn. This was before the election of Ronald Reagan, before the passage of the sharply regressive tax act of 1981, and even before the official commencement of the monetarist

Too many cooks? Tracking internal labor market dynamics in food service with case studies and quantitative data

We wish to acknowledge Radha Biswass participation and invaluable research assistance throughout this project. We also thank the Russell Sage and Rockefeller Foundations for financial support.

Lousy Jobs, Invisible Unions: The Mexican Retail Sector in the Age of Globalization

Globalization and modernization transformed the Mexican retail sector over the last two decades. One result is that Wal-Mart has become Mexicos dominant retailer. Another is the poor quality of jobs in the Mexican retail sector. Drawing on a variety of data sources, we review changes and current patterns in the characteristics and quality of retail jobs in Mexico. Retail jobs are worse than the Mexican average. Union coverage is widespread but offers little benefit to workers. Unlike the case in the United States, Wal-Mart offers unionized jobs very similar in quality to those of other retailers; indeed, in general we find little difference between the jobs of global and domestic Mexican retailers. Globalization and modernization have left Mexican retail workers with lousy jobs and invisible unions.

Working in large food retailers in France and the USA: the key role of institutions

Despite numerous similarities between the food retail sectors of France and the USA, there are significant contrasts in the jobs, and in particular the modal job, cashier. Notably, there are differences in pay, productivity and physical working position. Using the concept of ‘national-sectoral models’ of employment practices, this research draws on in-depth, interview-based case studies of food retailers in France and the USA, as well as standard data sources, to probe the reasons for these differences. Cross-national differences in wage-setting institutions, along with other institutional differences linked to family roles and disparate shopping cultures in the two countries, are key causes. These differences play out in interaction with distinct labour supply patterns, themselves based in part on differing institutions regarding reproduction of the labour force.

Precarious Labor, South and North: An Introduction

This special issue on precarious labor in global perspective includes analyses of precarious work in South Africa, Mexico, the United States, China and India. The key strengths of the contributions to this issue are that they demonstrate precarious workers’ capacity for collective action, the hidden forms of work that are not tracked by states, long-term historical continuities of precarious work, and differences between precarious work in the Global North and South. This introduction explores the challenges of conceptualizing precarious work; the history of precarious labor; its variations in the Global North and South; possible differences across sectors of precarious work; and the intersections between precarious work and categories of gender, race, and citizenship status. We conclude with a summary of the articles included in the issue.

A Review of Employment Conditions as Social Determinants of Health Part II: The Workplace

This is the second part of an article on employment conditions as social determinants of health and health inequalities. In part I of this article, we explored structural (external) employment conditions that affect health inequalities and health gradients. In this article, we try to examine the internal aspects of employment conditions that affect the same variables. It is not our intention to “box” employment conditions in a rigid framework within an internal domain of person-hazard interaction. The objective of examining this variable is to scrutinize internal aspects of employment conditions at a comprehensive policy level in conjunction with external contextual variables. Major occupational health concerns are examined in relationship to globalization, child labor, and work in the formal and informal sectors. Interventions that can eliminate or greatly reduce these exposures as well as those that have been unsuccessful are reviewed. Innovative interventions including work organization change, cleaner production, control banding, national and international coalitions, participatory training, and participatory approaches to improving the work environment are reviewed.