Author:
Retail’s ‘New Normal’?: Flexibilisation, De-skilling, and the Social World of Work in an American Hypermart
Beginning in 2003, Hometown Market, Ltd. —one of the largest and traditionally highest-paying retail employers in the formerly industrial town of Flint, Michigan—embarked on a company-wide efficiency campaign to cut costs and re-brand its public image. These measures were the most drastic set of changes to take place during the company’s 41-year history. Through its campaign, company leadership downsized managers and hourly workers by the thousands, outsourced in-store operations, amalgamated departments, and all but eliminated full-time hourly work. In my research based on over 50 interviews and three months of participant-observation, I found that the consequences of labour flexibilisation reverberated in ethnographically palpable ways throughout the social world of the workplace, affecting not only the role and status of workers, but also their relationships to each other and to the work that they do. This paper suggests that while in some cases workers have responded to de-skilling and the fragmentation of workplace community by generating surprising new forms of social solidarity, overall the cuts have brought about a drastic reduction in job quality. Ultimately, I suggest that Hometown’s participation in this ‘race to the bottom’ raises serious questions about the inevitability of these changes and the future of blue-collar jobs in deindustrialised America.