A growing service economy in the United States has made retail a major growth industry. This book details the preparation and training or schooling involved in securing a job in retail, depending on the position and one’s career goals, both short and long term. From clerks and cashiers to secret shoppers, working in online marketplaces and brick and mortar stores, retail work includes positions in many different kinds of stores: apparel, electronics, hardware, domestic appliances, big box, and more. The book outlines possible schedules, job search and interview skills, the road to advancement, and many other facets of the retail job market.
A research-backed clarion call to CEOs and managers, making the controversial case that good, well-paying jobs are not only good for workers and for society--they're good for business, too.
Retail is now the largest employer in the United States. For the most part, retail jobs are “bad jobs” characterized by low wages, unpredictable work schedules, and few opportunities for advancement. However, labor experts Françoise Carré and Chris Tilly show that these conditions are not inevitable. In Where Bad Jobs Are Better, they investigate retail work across different industries and seven countries to demonstrate that better retail jobs are not just possible, but already exist. By carefully analyzing the factors that lead to more desirable retail jobs, Where Bad Jobs Are Better charts a path to improving job quality for all low-wage jobs. In surveying retail work across the United States, Carré and Tilly find that the majority of retail workers receive low pay and nearly half work part-time, which contributes to high turnover and low productivity. Jobs staffed predominantly by women, such as grocery store cashiers, pay even less than retail jobs in male-dominated fields, such as consumer electronics. Yet, when comparing these jobs to similar positions in Western Europe, Carré and Tilly find surprising differences. In France, though supermarket cashiers perform essentially the same work as cashiers in the United States, they receive higher pay, are mostly full-time, and experience lower turnover and higher productivity. And unlike the United States, where many retail employees are subject to unpredictable schedules, in Germany, retailers are required by law to provide their employees notice of work schedules six months in advance. The authors show that disparities in job quality are largely the result of differing social norms and national institutions. For instance, weak labor regulations and the decline of unions in the United States have enabled retailers to cut labor costs aggressively in ways that depress wages and discourage full-time work. On the other hand, higher minimum wages, greater government regulation of work schedules, and stronger collective bargaining through unions and works councils have improved the quality of retail jobs in Europe. As retail and service work continue to expand, American employers and policymakers will have to decide the extent to which these jobs will be good or bad. Where Bad Jobs Are Better shows how stronger rules and regulations can improve the lives of retail workers and boost the quality of low-wage jobs across the board.
This book makes use of a four country research programme, covering France, Germany, Great Britain and Japan. Investigations and interviews at store, company and individual levels paint a picture of working times in the sector and in each of the countries. The volume provides some explanations for national differences as well as the similarities; supply and demand issues, as well as societal and social backgrounds. Large format food retailing is a major force in each country, employing millions in many different situations and conditions. This book suggests opportunities for retailers and employees to better manage their situations.
The retail industry is changing rapidly, and it is technology that will change it irrevocably this coming century. Automation, sophisticated marketing and store design, anti-theft and loss prevention techniques, and many more topics make this book an ideal compendium of tech deployed in retail spaces throughout North America. Potential store employees bound for after-school or summer jobs, or even a career in retail, will benefit from this book's analysis and predictions. Advice for job seekers and handy information about industry trends and statistics make this book a go-to resource.
This anthology examines women’s paid work in terms of both access to the economic system and the broader agenda of achieving feminist social change worldwide. Generations of feminists have linked women’s empowerment, autonomy, and oppression to issues involving work. Most conflated women’s economic and political clout with gender equity, arguing that increasing women’s access to and leadership in the public workplace is crucial to the success of the feminist project. But recent debates about women's continued inability to gain equality in the workplace raise the need for new approaches to teaching about gender and employment. Getting In Is Not Enough responds to the challenge. Drawn from almost two decades of the Feminist Formations journal, the essays in this book critically examine assumptions about access and the ways in which women affect and are affected by work in three major spheres: economic, social, and political. Getting In Is Not Enough focuses on how access-based feminism, a term developed by Colette Morrow and Terri Ann Fredrick, has both failed and succeeded in achieving equity and justice for women and looks at how transnational feminism has addressed these concerns using a global, fundamentally transformative approach. The contributors consider a wide range of issues, from an examination of the male/female wage gap that starts when girls are teenagers, to policewomen in Persian Gulf countries, to Latinas’ politics, to Aboriginal health care workers, to secretarial work, and to feminist activism in Cuban hip hop.
"It is possible to have the job of your dreams. Together we are going to set about getting you there. Before I joined the BBC's Dragons' Den, I spent thirty years setting up and running recruitment companies, placing hundreds of thousands of candidates in the jobs they really wanted. I will take you through the process step by step. How to stay positive in a difficult economic climate and find the right opportunities. How to package yourself to make sure you secure an interview. The vital importance of preparation, so that you are relaxed and give a great performance at interview. How to show your passion, and ask the perfect questions. And finally, how to use your power by closing the best deal on a job offer. At every stage I will help you rethink the traditional, formulaic approach to job hunting. It's the detail that makes the difference. This book is not about hoping you get lucky. It is about creating your own luck." James Caan
This book explores Indian women's economic contribution through paid and unpaid work in different sectors of the economy and society in extremely diverse life situations and geographical locations. It highlights gender implications of interlinkages between local, national, regional and global dimensions of women's paid and unpaid work in India. It encompasses a vast canvas of life worlds of working women in the metropolitan, urban, peri-urban, rural, tribal areas in manufacturing, agricultural, fisheries, sericulture, plantation and service sectors of the Indian economy. It provides nuanced insights into intersectional marginalities of caste, class, ethnicity, religion and gender. The chapters are based on primary data collection and triangulation of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. It presents the multiple marginalities of Indian women in the globalized political economy of the 21st century. It not only focuses on emerging issues but also suggests evidence-based policy imperatives. This book is an essential read for researchers, scholars, policymakers, practitioners and students of women/gender studies.
A deeply-reported examination of why "doing what you love" is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives. You're told that if you "do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." Whether it's working for "exposure" and "experience," or enduring poor treatment in the name of "being part of the family," all employees are pushed to make sacrifices for the privilege of being able to do what we love. In Work Won't Love You Back, Sarah Jaffe, a preeminent voice on labor, inequality, and social movements, examines this "labor of love" myth—the idea that certain work is not really work, and therefore should be done out of passion instead of pay. Told through the lives and experiences of workers in various industries—from the unpaid intern, to the overworked teacher, to the nonprofit worker and even the professional athlete—Jaffe reveals how all of us have been tricked into buying into a new tyranny of work. As Jaffe argues, understanding the trap of the labor of love will empower us to work less and demand what our work is worth. And once freed from those binds, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure, and satisfaction.
