10/26/22: Sweated Labor: Gigwork, Essential Work, and the Wages of Service

Recorded on Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Webinar Navigation

Sweated Labor: Gigwork, Essential Work, and the Wages of Service

About the webinar:

During this webinar, learners will explore the relationship between contemporary “essential work” and the history of sweated labor. A particular focus will be an examination of how pandemic discourse of “essential work” both sentimentalized and heroized predominantly female and non-white service workers. We will also consider the service sector’s reliance on non-hourly wage forms like piece-rate and tips - - both methods of wage payment that have historically been feminized, racialized, and excluded from legal regulation.

Learning Objectives

At the completion of this activity, the learner will be able to:

  • Discuss the history of “sweated” manufacturing labor and the history of the category
    “essential work”

  • Describe how the Fair Labor Standards Act depended on the exclusion of service workers in general and tip workers in particular

  • Critically examine the contemporary discourse of “essential work” and gigwork in the age of the pandemic

Annie McClanahan, PhD

Annie McClanahan is an Associate Professor of English at UC Irvine, where she is co-director of the Black Studies Cohort Ph.D. recruitment project and faculty for UCI-LIFTED, which provides a college education for incarcerated students. Her work takes a Marxist-feminist approach to the relationship between economic conditions and cultural production. Her first book, Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and 21st Century Culture was published in 2017 and her talk comes from her book in progress, tentatively titled Tipwork Microwork Gigwork: Culture and the Wages of Service.

ACCREDITATION

The Center for Occupational and Environmental Health designates this activity for a maximum of 1.0 Contact Hour. Participants should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation.

Certificates of Completion

Certificates of Completion will be available to webinar participants who are present for the complete, live webinar, and logged in with their registered email address. Call-in attendees are not eligible for certificates at this time - Please download the Zoom app to log in via email on your smartphone whenever possible.

In order to receive your Certificate of Completion, qualified learners must complete the post-webinar evaluation within 7 days of the webinar. A link to the evaluation will be emailed to qualified learners 24 hours after the webinar via no-reply@zoom.us. Qualified learners who submit their evaluation will receive a Certificate of Completion via email, and can also print/save the certificate from their browser after submitting their evaluation.

If you're not able to attend the live presentation, no problem! We record most presentations and will host them on our website provided we have permission to do so. Presentation recordings are not eligible for Certificates of Completion.

California Labor Lab Logo

About the CA Labor Lab:

The California Labor Lab is a collaboration among investigators at UCSF, UC Berkeley, and the California Department of Public Health. The Lab is housed at the Philip R Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF. Our mission is to extend the pursuit of health and safety for workers in traditional employment to those in a wide range of alternative arrangements in partnership with affected communities.

Click here to learn more about the Labor Lab.

ACCESSIBILITY:

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) to fully participate in this event, please contact Michelle Meyer at (510) 642-8365 or mmeyer@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail) with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.