Abstract
In the aftermath of welfare reform, the majority of poor single mothers must struggle for economic subsistence in the low-wage labor market. It is the arena in which workers and their managers have to adapt to and manage ill-paying jobs and difficult working conditions. Mothers must figure out how to sustain their families with wholly inadequate earnings; how to balance the harsh demands of the workplace while attending to complex and unpredictable family needs; and how to navigate shifting and unstable work schedules and child care arrangements. Their managers and supervisors are caught between pressures to enforce workplace rules and regulations, and the moral consequences of their own actions. Looking through an ethnographic lens at these dynamic and conflict-ridden relationships, Lisa Dodson attempts to answer three interrelated questions: What leads mothers to break workplace rules as they scramble to balance between their family needs and the demands of work? How do workplace supervisors and managers respond when mothers try to circumvent the work rules? When do their supervisors also decide to ignore or subvert the rules? The leitmotif of the book is that when people, both workers and managers, face the inherent injustices in low-wage workplaces, at least some of them are willing to subvert the rules. There is also an implicit subtext that runs through the book: Acts of rule violations in the workplace are forces of resistance against the dominant capitalist logic and its exaltation of the work ethic.
The book consists mostly of a series of narratives or stories of workers, supervisors and managers that the author has collected over a period of eight years at different locations and various work settings. These include establishments that rely on low-wage workers such as retail stores, services and offices, hospitals, and nursing homes. Also included are child care centers, schools and community health centers on which the mothers depend for the care of their children. The author interviewed both low-wage workers and middle-income managerial workers. In what she terms “participatory” or “collaborative” research, the author also used focus groups whose members participated in analyzing the meanings of the data she has gathered.
The wrenching stories that the poor working mothers tell would be familiar to most students of the low-wage market (e.g., Edin and Lein 1997; Collins and Mayer 2010). The women give vivid accounts of what it means to survive on meager earnings; the constant pressures to balance between the demands of work and the care of their children; having to face frequent breakdowns in their child care arrangements due to irregular work schedules; working under-the-table to supplement their income; having to work even when they or their children are sick, for fear of being fired; experiencing persistent financial hardships that deprive their children of basic necessities; and being under constant fear that the demands of their job will force them to neglect their children. To survive they have to cut corners and break the rules such as bringing their child to the work place when care arrangements fall apart, skip work to attend to family needs, or subtly neglect certain work demands.
However, what is the distinct contribution of the book are the stories of how some managers and supervisors routinely break the rules on behalf of their workers. These include such things as giving their workers goods without having to pay for them; keeping double time sheets so their workers can leave work to care for their children; or simply bending or ignoring the rules so that their workers can succeed. In some settings such as hospitals, staff may break the rules to provide medical services to undocumented patients, and show patients how to fill out forms and omit certain information so that they qualify for the care they need. In schools, nurses, social workers and teachers may bend the rules so that children can remain in school despite the difficulties their parents have in caring for them. In all of these and other instances the staffs engage in what Dobson calls moral disobedience. This is particularly evident when it comes to “rules vs. the child” choice. It is here that the moral dilemma between enforcing rules that might hurt the well-being of children or ignoring and bending them for the sake of the children comes into sharp relief.
To provide a broader context to these narratives, the author intersperses throughout the book brief summaries of well-known studies on the low-wage labor market, income inequality, child poverty, and poverty and health. Still, while the narratives on rule breaking are quite revealing, the book falters when it comes to explaining why some middle managers and supervisors are willing to break the rules and others do not. The author does argue that those who identify with the work-ethic ideology tend to blame the poor workers for their predicament. She also distinguishes between the sympathetic employers who may overlook rule violations, the marketeers who accept the market logic and dismiss the human costs of business practices, and the morally disobedient managers who actively respond to the economic injustices. But recognizing the general dominance of the work-ethic in American society and its differential acceptance by employers can hardly suffice as an explanation. Not only we do not know how prevalent is rule breaking, but more importantly, the author offers no theoretical framework that would put the rich data through an analysis that is informed by it. There is no attempt to explore what factors shape the belief systems, role expectations and practices of those who are willing to break the role versus those who refuse. There is no discussion of how the organizational context might influence the degree to which staff members might be willing to bend the rules. Most importantly, there is no acknowledgement that in most of these organizations enforcement of the rules and rewards for conformity and compliance are institutionalized in their daily practices and routines. Put differently, the power allocations within these organizations make rule breaking an exception rather than a common occurrence (see for example, Clegg, Courpasson and Phillips 2006). Even in such settings as schools, hospitals and child care centers where street-level workers do exercise considerable discretion, they may not act in the best interests of their clients (Lipsky 1980).
The book leaves the reader with a distinct sense that the author is on a moral crusade to expose the injustices of what she terms an “immoral economy,” and to promote the moral underground as a force for social change. One can, of course, sympathize with her stance, and I am among them. But, without putting her observations to an empirical test that is informed by theory, the narratives remain essentially descriptive. The book leaves unanswered the question of what conditions give rise to the moral underground.