Problems and Resiliance Strategies of Retail Trade Front-Line Workers. Job Quality in One of the Largest Low-Wage Industries in the US and Italy

The retail sector is one of the largest low-wage industries, both in US and EU, providing jobs to the weakest components of the labor force - women, low educated, young, migrants – who are the most hit by the recent crisis. If we want to investigate the main difficulties they have been facing and the resilience strategies they put in place, the focus on workers in the retail trade is very meaningful. Use of part-time, limited career opportunities, low level of wages and high instability of labor contracts can become very problematic in a context of increasing economic insecurity. Over all for adults with family burden, who have been gradually substituting the very young labor force previously employed in the sector.

The paper is based on statistical data and interviews with workers, carried out in Milan and New York. The Italy/US comparison is very useful to highlight how and to what extent the different institutional contexts (labor legislation, unionization) do have an impact on the objective dimensions of job quality (wages, working conditions) while the subjective dimensions (satisfaction) might be affected by the different expectations that workers have about their job in the retail sector. In particular, the local labor market conditions and the characteristics of the labor force employed in the sector are likely to influence the workers’ expectations. The micro-perspective, focused on individual work experiences, is helpful in highlighting the impact of macro characteristics (institutional frameworks) and trends (crisis) on people lives, where resilience strategies essentially take place.