working youth

8/4/2019 Working Youth

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Why D o Workin g Youth Work Where They Do?

A R eport from t he Young W orker Project1

Stuart TannockMarch 2002

Introduction

Youth in the Un ited States work pred ominantly in low-end jobs in the service

sector often in dead end jobs or McJobs located in restau rants, malls, retail

outlets, warehouses, offices, movie theaters, theme p arks and so on. Working minors

are especially concentrated in low-end service work, with over a third finding

emp loymen t in restaurants and gr ocery stores alone (National Research Council 1998).

Many youth in their late teens and twen ties likewise find themselves continuing in jobs

mu ch the same as those they had wh ile in high school. Indeed , low-end service work

has become na turalized as an extend ed rite of passage for American you th. Whole

segments of service sector employment are w idely stereotyped and easily identifiable as

being app ropriately youth forms of work .

Why do working youth w ork where they do? How d id youth employment in

America come to look the way it does today? In this paper, I point to four key factors.

Contem porary you th work in low-end service jobs becau se: (1) this is where youth

have always w orked; (2) there has been a broad shift in our society from an indu strial

to a post-ind ustrial economy; (3) structural transformations within the low-end service

sector have favored the em ployment of youth; and (4) the rise of consumerism and

commod ification of youth via mass advertising have increased both the sup ply and

1 The Youn g Worker Project is an effort to bring togeth er academ ic researchers, labor and comm un ity

organizers, stud ents, youth an d edu cators wh o are concerned w ith imp roving youth w ork cond itions in

the San Francisco Bay Area. The Project is hou sed at th e Center for Labor Research a nd Education at the

Univer sity of California, Berkeley, and is coordina ted by Sara Flocks, Nato Green, Warren M ar and Stuart

Tannock. Sara Flocks, Warren Mar, Nato Green and Robin Gryczman a ll prov ided inv aluable assistance

on the w riting of this pap er. For more informa tion abou t the Youn g Worker Project, contact Sara Flocks

at [email protected] ley.edu .


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demand for young service sector wo rkers. Consideration of all four of these factors is

critical for those wh o would wish to transform and improve w hat are all too often

marg inalized an d exploitative youth w orking conditions.

A Long History of Youth in Service

One simple answ er to the question of why you th today w ork in low-end service

jobs is that young p eople have always performed su ch work. Stand ard h istories of

children, youth and work typically construct narratives of rad ical transformations over

the past two centu ries. An initially agrarian society in which children and youth

worked within h ousehold-based p roduction and farming, and you ng m en took on

appren ticeships to learn skilled trad es was fun damen tally reshaped by the ravages of

the ind ustrial revolution in the nineteenth centu ry. Youth w ere pu lled into waged

emp loyment; craft-based ap pren ticeships gave way to the mass and bru tal reality of

unskilled child factory labor. Subsequ ent technological, econom ic, social and p olitical

shifts grad ually led to the end of the era of children working in factories. Over the

course of the first half of the twentieth centu ry, the spread of child labor laws and

compu lsory edu cation removed m ore and more you th from the full-time wage labor

market altogether. During the second half of the tw entieth centu ry, you th increasingly

returned to the wage labor market, only now as p art-time stud ent workers, who

combined formal stud ies with tem porary and seasonal stints in low-end service work.

Such stories of sweeping change belie an endu ring continu ity. For even at the

height of concern w ith child factory labor at the end of the n ineteenth century, only a

minority of working children w ere ever emp loyed in manu facturing and mining

(Nard inelli 1990). The large majority of working children w orked , as they long had , in

agriculture and in the service and d istribu tive ind ustries (Kett 1977). Nineteenth an d

early twentieth-centu ry cities, accord ing to historian David Nasaw (1985: 48), pr ovided

an over-abu nd ance of low-end service jobs for child w orkers :

[Child ren] provided city workers and residen ts with their afternoon and Sunday

papers, their gum , cand y, pencils, and shiny shoes. They helped ou t at home

with the cooking, cleaning and laund ry. They ran errand s and m ade deliveries


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for neighborhood trad esmen, carried messages for dow ntown businessmen who

could not yet rely on on th eir customers to have teleph ones, and d id od d jobs for

shopkeepers and local man ufacturers.

In the grand dep artment stores that were born in this era such as Macys and Marshall

Fields fu lly one-third of the labor force was comp osed of cash girls and cash boys,

youn g child ren busily involved in transporting m oney and goods between sales clerks,

the wrap ping d esk, and the cashier (Zelizer 1985: 63). Moreover, man y of the children

wh o worked in man ufacturing and mining were in actuality emp loyed there in order to

perform service tasks in support of adu lt prod uction workers. For examp le, in one

typical glass factory at the end of the nineteenth centu ry, over 40% of the workforce

were boys. The tasks for which these boys were reponsible, how ever, consisted ofmu ch the same sort of delivery work such as was p erformed by their peers working as

messenger boys and n ewsies in the city streets, or as cash boys and girls in city

d epartment stores: Take-out boys and snap per-ups carried the blown glass in tongs

from the b lowers to the finishers; the carry-in boys picked it up from th e finishers and

placed it in th e cooling ovens to h ard en (Nasaw 1985: 44).

In p re-indu strial times, young children from poor families were frequen tly

placed ou t in wealthier families to serve as maids, servants and helpers ind eed,

dom estic service remained the largest employer of youn g wom en throu ghou t the

nineteenth century (Ben-Amos 1995; Kett 1977; Nasaw 1985). As was the case in

man ufacturing settings, children and youth w ho worked in household -based

prod uction and agr iculture typ ically foun d themselves performing service and su pp ort

tasks (cleaning, carrying , fetching, etc.) for adu lt kin. While apprentices of this period

were in th eory placed u nd er the control of master craftsmen in ord er to learn a skilled

trade, an all too comm on complaint from you ng ap prentices was that they were taught

no skilled trad e at all, but were instead expected to perform rote, mun dane, unskilled

and d ead -end service and sup port work (Hine 1999). (This, of course, is a complaint

one hears to this very day from youth w ho take on low-paid or un paid internships in


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the often frustrated h ope of learning about and gaining entry to prestigious and high

paid occup ations in med ia, law, finance, and so forth.)

In the early twentieth century, child labor laws focused on rem oving child ren

from ind ustrial emp loyment, while more end uring an d trad itional forms of youth

service and delivery work (exemp lified in the era by messenger boys and newspaper

carriers) continu ed to be considered widely acceptable (Zelizer 1985). The spread of

compu lsory schooling u nd eniably had an enorm ous impact on removing children from

the fu ll-time w aged workforce. Yet child and youth part-time and seasonal service

work continu ed to be an integral part of American society and economy. Thus A.B.

Hollingshead (1949: 267), in Elmtowns Youth, his classic study of the lives of American

ad olescents in the 1940s in th e mid -western U.S., could w rite that:

The Elmtow n economy has relied up on the labor of boys and girls since frontier

days. The langu age is sprinkled w ith descriptive terms ind icative of the roles

boys have p layed in the m ines, mills, stores, and offices: grocery boys, butcher

boys, mine boys, wa ter boys, engine boys, barge boys, stable boys, donkey boys,

printers devils, office boys, d ray boys, ash boys. The w orking girls roles have

been limited trad itionally to h ousemaid, nursem aid, ribbon clerk, office girl,

wa itress, seamstress, and barmaid.

Hollingshead noted that Elmtowns economy [had] changed radically in the last two

genera tions (p.267); and that u nions no longer allow th irteen- and fourteen-year-old

boys in the coal mines, the Mill, or the Foundry (p.268). However, Hollingsh ead a lso

pointed out that there are no u nion p ressures to keep [boys] out of any sma ll business,

nor has the union closed the d oor to girls who wish to w ork in restaurants, stores,

and hom es (p.268). Today, wrote Hollingshead in 1949, the distributive and serv ice

aspects of the economy h ave as m uch n eed for ad olescent emp loyees as in an earlier era,

perhap s more (p.268).

Why have working youth and children been consistently concentrated in low-

end service work? The answer has less to do with any innate capacities (or lack thereof)

or affinities that you ng p eople have for performing service work, and more w ith wh at

Phil Cohen (1999) talks of as a labor m arket system of patriarchy, and wh at Diane


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Elson (1982) describes as a labor m arket system of seniority. Focusing on th e issue of

child labor, Elson (1982: 479) argues that occup ational h ierarchies in society are

constructed not just along lines of race, gender and class, bu t also of age:

Childr ens labour p ower is systematically d ifferentiated from the labour p ower

of adu lts working for capitalist enterp rises. The m ost obvious and un iversal

d ifferentiation is that childrens labour is remu nerated at a lower rate than th at of

ad u lts. There is also differentiation w ithin the labor process, where children

generally have a d ifferent status from ad ults they are trainees, appren tices,

casual or temp orary labourers, helpers or mates of adult w orkers, subject to

the au thority of adu lt workers, as well as to the owners or man agers of the

enterprise.

Age hierarchies structure rem un eration an d status within occup ations, as well as age-based str atification across occup ations. The kinds of tasks that comp rise low-end

service work have long been seen as low in status, value an d skill and, in fact, unlike

even the most m enial forms of agricultural and indu strial labor, as hard ly even

constituting real wor k. Such tasks, consequently, have historically been consigned to

those groups wh o are most disempowered an d m arginalized: women , minorities,

immigrants, as well as children and you th (Glenn 1992; Macdon ald an d Siriann i 1996).

Working you th have been confined to low-end service work in large part

through their being explicitly excluded, both institutionally and ideologically, from

higher w age and higher status occup ations. Seniority rules, limited op enings in

appren ticeships and professional schools, minimu m age limitations, and compu lsory

schooling (that restricts school age you th to part-time em ployment) have all been used

by ad ults (especially wh ite males) as ways to protect their own interests in the labor

market an d exclude youth from good and stable forms of emp loyment (Osterman 1980).

Prejud icial stereotypes of youth as being imm ature, ignorant, incapable, unstable and

un reliable have long been invoked to argue that youth are fit for little more than the

most mu nd ane, unskilled form s of entry-level service work (Tann ock 2001).

Cond emn ing you th to ted ious and routine service sector jobs has further been justified

by p opu lar beliefs in the school of hard knocks and the value an d necessity of


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paying ones dues. Even the most unp leasant and intolerable forms of child and

youth work have been constructed as being character-bu ilding and valuable for the

socialization and education of younger generations (Greenberger & Steinberg 1986;

Nieuw enhu ys 1986). The long h istory of youth in service has p rodu ced and itself

been rep roduced by a constellation of beliefs and practices that today lead many

adults and youth alike to see the contemporary concentration of working you th in low-

end service work as being natu ral, inevitable and a ltogether un remarkable: for this,

after all, is wh at young peop le do and h ave always done.

Post-Ind ustrialism, Edu cational Expan sion an d the Rise of the Stud ent Worker

To say that there have been continuities in the lives of working youth through

history is not to deny th at there have simultaneously been radical changes. One of the

most significant has been cau sed by th e broad shift in the United States, over the last

several decades, from an indu strial, man ufacturing-based economy to a p ost-indu strial,

service and information econom y. While emp loyment numbers and conditions in

Americas manufacturing sector have been eroded through a combination of

technological change, man agerial restructuring, d eun ionization, global competition and

capital flight, low-end service jobs have proliferated alm ost end lessly. Job categories

such as cashiers, dr ivers, security guard s and sales clerks continue to be p redicted by

the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to be among the largest gr owing for the foreseeable

future. Already, over three quarters of Americans of all ages are employed in the

service sector, a good many of them in low-end , low-wage jobs (Herzenberg, Alic and

Wial 1998). In a telling sign of the times, Wal-Mart, wh ich h as been for several years the

largest priva te emp loyer in the United States, passed Exxon Mobil in Janu ary 2002 to

become the nations largest company in terms of revenu e.

The shift from an indu strial to a post-indu strial economy has h ad its primary

impact on the lives of working-class and minority youth, and on you th over the age of

seventeen (working m inors, after all, have rarely been emp loyed in m anu facturing,


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since the passage of child labor laws and spread of compu lsory second ary education in

the early twentieth century). Working class and minority youth u sed to be able to

gradua te from or d rop out of high school and find stable, long-term, relatively well-

paying em ployment in m anu facturing, mining, and other resource extraction indu stries

as well as in wh at was, for many years, an expanding p ublic sector. With the collapse

of Americas manufactur ing base and the freeze or downsizing of public sector

employm ent (brought abou t by fiscal crisis and the rise of neoliberal ideology), job

opp ortun ities for working class youth w ere altered almost beyond recognition (The

Forgotten Half1988; Weis 1990). Poverty rates for working you th close to dou bled ov er

the last two d ecades (Newman 1999: 42); wh ile in inner-city neighborhood s across the

country, unem ploym ent rates for minority youth soared (New man 1999; Wilson 1996).Stable, well-paying jobs these days are increasingly available pr imar ily for

knowledge workers (i.e., professionals, administrators, technology workers) with

advanced levels of training and ed ucation. High school graduates and d ropou ts now

find themselves, up on leaving school, flound ering in wh at The Forgotten Half(1988: 11),

the influential report on work, you th and family from the William T. Grant Foundation,

described as a sea of pa rt-time, low-paying, limited-future serv ice-sector jobs that is,

if they are lucky enou gh to get a job at all. Post-ind ustrialism is creating a society

increasingly polarized along the lines of education between the haves and the have-

nots: between high w age know ledge workers who require high levels of edu cation, and

mu ch larger numbers of low wage service workers, wh ose advanced ed ucational

accomp lishments or poten tial are made largely irrelevant by the limited edu cational

demand s of their jobs (Harrison an d Bluestone 1988; Herzenberg, Alic and Wial 1998;

Reich 1992). New genera tions of working class youth , some w orry, are at risk of being

locked into a new service proletariat (Esping-Andersen 1993). Only those who are

able to continue w ith fur ther edu cation w ill be able to use their post-second ary

credentials to secure increased emp loyment op portu nities.

Getting m ore education, however, is precisely what m ore and more you th

wor king class and mid d le class alike are spend ing more an d more of their lives trying


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to do. In a society in which higher ed ucation is increasingly seen as being the only ticket

to a m idd le class level of living, it is not surprising th at the U.S. has seen a steady and

continu al increase in p ost-second ary ed ucation participation rates over the last century.

Indeed, as sociologist David Livingston e (1999) argu es, the United States is home to an

escalating edu cational arm s race, as individu als from all social backgrounds invest in

ever higher levels of edu cation in the hope of w inning entran ce into that elite minority

of the countrys jobs that p ay high w ages, offer stable emp loymen t and requ ire college

degrees. The pop ular d emand for schooling is not diminishing, Livingstone (1999:

17) writes, on the contrary, it is extending furth er and further into adu lthood. The

vast majority of youth in this coun try now spend the years following high school

pursuing (occasionally in sporadic fashion) some kind of formal or non-formaledu cation, whether in GED programs; private technology, arts, or media academies;

trad e or vocational institutes; or two -year or four-year colleges. Only a minority of U.S.

you th ever obtain a bachelors (or higher) degree: many you th (working class and

minority, especially) drop out of higher education withou t earning any type of

credential wh atsoever; others are able to earn a creden tial below the bachelor degree

level and enter into wh at Nor ton Grubb (1996) has iden tified as a vast sub-

baccalaureate labor market in wh ich w ages and working cond itions sometimes

constitute on ly limited improvements over the en try-level service jobs in w hich youth

are initially emp loyed.

Edu cational expansion, spu rred by the shift from an ind ustrial to a post-

indu strial society, has had a tremend ous impact on both the natu re and scope of youth

work. The very category of youth itself which historically has been closely associated

with enrollment in formal edu cation, exclusion from the fu ll-time or pr imary labor

market, and , consequen tly, an extended p eriod of economic semi-dependence and legal

and social semi-au tonomy (Demos 1986; Fasick 1994; Griffin 1993) has exp anded

upw ard s in its normative age range (Ct and Allahar 1994; Wallace and Kovatcheva

1998). Workers in their 20s and even ear ly 30s, for example, who migh t have been

identified in anoth er era as clearly being adu lt workers, may now see themselves (and


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be seen by others) as being you th w orkers. A key factor in this shift has been the rise

and proliferation of the social category of the stud ent worker. Whereas once it was

usual that youth either went to school or they w ent into the workforce, nowad ays in the

United States, most you th, whether at the high school or post-high school level,

combine both schooling and em ployment (Greenberger and Steinberg 1986; Horn 1998;

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2001). An ever expan ding segment of the nation s

workforce, therefore, is mad e up of (youn g) ind ividu als who work in the low-end

service sector, who identify them selves primarily as stud ents rather than as workers,

and wh o orient to their current service jobs as being temp orary (or youth) places of

emp loyment that they h ope w ill be left far behind once their program s of study have

been comp leted (Tannock 2001; Tann ock and Flocks 2002).Educational expan sion has also shaped w here youth a re working: in the low-end

service sector. The reason is that stud ents who w ant or need to work m ust find jobs

that they can fit around th eir school schedules they seek, typically, part-time,

temporary, week-end , evening, or seasonal employment. As will be described in the

following section, it is precisely these kinds of irregu lar or nonstan dard jobs that

have p roliferated at an often breath-taking pace over the last few decades w ithin the

low-end serv ice and reta il industry sector. Youth, it is imp ortan t to recognize, do not

wor k in low-end service jobs just because of an absence of better employmen t

opp ortun ities in m anu facturing or the pu blic sector; they also work in these jobs

because of their own presence within institutions of secondary and post-second ary

education. This, in pa rticular, is the irony of college stud ent emp loymen t. College

stud ents, who work to cover rising costs of tuition, books, rent and personal living

expenses, often find themselves having to look for employmen t in exactly the same

kind s of low-status, low-wage service sector jobs tha t they h ave gon e to college in the

first p lace in ord er to escape (Tann ock and Flocks 2002).


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Transformations in the Retail and Service Ind ustries

InDishing it Out: Waitresses and their Unions in the Twentieth Century , Dorothy Sue

Cobble (1991) recalls an often forgotten h istory of restaurant w ork in the Un ited States.

Waitresses in the U.S. were once highly un ionized. At their peak in the 1940s and 1950s,

waitress unions rep resented one-quarter of restaurant waitstaff nationally, and as mu ch

as 70, 80 and even 90 per cent of waitresses in cities such as Seattle, San Francisco,

Detroit, New York and Butte, Montana. Unionized w aitresses saw them selves as

skilled craftswomen, developed a strong occup ational craft consciousness, and fought

collectively to transform their work into a steady, respectable, reward ing, well-paid and

career form of emp loyment.

Despite considerable strength and success, however, the waitress un ions, by the

beginning of the 1980s, had all but d isappeared . Granny un ionists and full-time,

career waitresses were increasingly being forced aside by w aves up on w aves of young,

temporary, part-time, and often stud ent workers:

Part-time and temporary w aitresses had always been a significant sector of the

trad e but definitely a minority faction. In the p ostwar era, the retail food industry

became a p rimary em ployer of pa rt-timers teenagers, college studen ts, married

moth ers, and mu ltiple job-holders or moon lighters flooded into the new part-time job openings. In 1940, 21 percent of fema le servers were p art-time; thirty

years later the figure had skyrocketed to 63 percent. The rise of ma le part-timers

was just as phen omen al: from rou ghly one in ten in 1940 to a ma jority of the

trad e by 1970. By 1980, the Department of Labor estimated that only on e-fifth

of food service workers were em ployed year-roun d and full-time, the lowest of

any occup ational category except p rivate household. The average age of food

servers dropp ed as w ell as employers turn ed to teenage and stud ent help.

(Cobble 1991: 195)

The waitress unions, with their highly d eveloped sense of craft consciousness and

occupa tional solidar ity, had a difficu lt time connecting with the new genera tions of

workers w ho w ere spilling into the na tions restauran ts. Few of these young workers,

writes Cobble (1991: 196), saw their primary commitment as being to th e culinary

workplace; their interests and identity resided elsewhere. They considered th emselves


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actresses or stud ents or some other label bu t not food servers. Waiting, said on e, is

like the w ay station of life. You cant have you r d ream n ow, so you w ork in a

restaurant.

The story of rad ical labor market tran sformation that Cobble tells is not u nique to

the restaurant ind ustry. Similar accoun ts have been p rodu ced , for example, for the

department store and retail clothing sector (Benson 1986; Bernhardt 1999; Noyelle 1987);

and for the grocery trade (Hu ghes 1999; Mayo 1993; Walsh 1993). What happen ed to

cause such transformations? In part, labor market shifts were the simp le result of the

rapid expansion of many service indu stries du ring the post-war period an expansion

brou ght abou t by increasing prosper ity, rising consum erism, and a self-fulfilling cycle

in wh ich the mass entrance of women into the labor force led to the sp readingcommod ification of services that had previously been p rovided by hou sewives within

the home (Macdonald an d Sirianni 1996: 2). Find ing it d ifficult to fill bu rgeoning job

open ings, service emp loyers turned to exploit a new , massive, cheap an d largely

unta pped sou rce of labor: teenagers and stud ents (Marqu ard t 1998; Reiter 1991). The

explosion of fastfood and other franchise industries in the 1960s and 1970s happen ed to

coincide, fortuitously from employers point of view, with the baby-boom expansion of

the teenaged pop ulation in the United States, so that there were m ore teenagers in the

country than there ever had been in history (Luxenberg 1985; Schlosser 2001).

Structural shifts within restaurant, retail and service indu stries facilitated the

move from a workforce dom inated by skilled, career craftsmen and craftswomen to one

based up on youn g, temporary, minimally trained and minimum wage w orkers.

Regional and national chains an d franchises, building their emp ires on cheap, fast and

no-frills service, swept th rough a sector that h ad once been made up largely of small,

local and ind epen dent pr oprietorships (Luxenberg 1985). In 1931, writes Cobble

(1991: 193), fewer than 3 percent of the nations restaurants w ere chain-operated ; in the

1980s, McDonalds alone accounted for 17 percent of all restauran t visits. In their

search for greater efficiency and reduced production costs, the chains turn ed to

increased au tomation and rou tinization (Leidner 1993; Ritzer 1996); to the mass


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emp loyment of cheap teenaged labor (whose low wages could be subsidized by

parental earnings); and to what N ona Glazer (1993) calls work tran sfer, that is, the

shift from a full-service to a self-service retail model. From grocery stores to gas

stations, department stores to restauran ts, customers were increasingly asked to help

themselves, wh ile the core tasks for wh ich service workers w ere held responsible w ere

wh ittled dow n to a m un dan e core of stocking, cleaning, machine-tend ing, script-

following and cashiering.

Low end service ind ustries moved geograp hically du ring the p ost-war era, from

city centers to the subu rbs wh ere the bulk of the na tions white, mid dle-class consu mer s

were now living (Luxenberg 1985). This suburbanization of service work had a

considerable impact on one of the m ore w idely noted characteristics of youth(specifically teenage) emp loymen t in the United States: unlike in man y other countr ies,

in the U.S., mid dle class teenagers are more likely to work than poor teenagers

(Greenberger and Steinberg 1986). One d irect cau se of this is differential access to

emp loymen t (Boyd en, Ling and Myers 1998). Midd le class teenagers work in the low

end service sector in pa rt because low end service jobs have come to them. The

restaurants, retail outlets, superm arkets and movie theaters in w hich these youth find

emp loyment are close to their homes, in their neighborhoods, and adjacent to their high

school and college campu ses.

Expan ded work hou rs also had a p ivotal effect on the service sector w orkforce.

Whereas retail had once been organ ized as a Mond ay to Friday (or Saturd ay) and 9 to 5

business, consumer demand and the large-scale entrance of women into the workforce

(that mad e day shopping more inaccessible for many wom en) pu shed the indu stry

increasingly toward a seven day a week, roun d the clock schedu le (Macdonald and

Sirianni 1996; Walsh 1993). Expand ed w ork hou rs led em ployers to turn to teenagers

and students to fill irregular evening and w eekend work shifts. Expan ded work hours

were also one of the critical wed ges that initially sparked the grow th of par t-time jobs in

the reta il sector (Tilly 1996). Once employers began u sing part-timers en masse to staff

irregular w ork shifts, they qu ickly became aw are that sw itching en tirely from a full-


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time to a part-time workforce could br ing considerab le cost savings both throu gh

redu ced w age and benefit packages, and through new lean and m ean just-in-time

sched uling p ractices that m inimized shift lengths and staggered shift starting points

through out th e day in an effort to squ eeze out every last minu te of excess staffing

time (Tilly 1996). The ensuing part-time revolu tion transformed working cond itions for

all workers in the low end service indu stry; it also shifted the very make-up of the

service workforce, by favoring the emp loyment of youth (and other group s) wh o were

willing and able to work only part-time hours.

That service sector emp loyers were able to make such d ramatic changes in their

labor process changes which led to the steady d eterioration of working cond itions for

their emp loyees was a prod uct of several broader factors. The collapse of high wagemanu factur ing in the U.S. meant th at service emp loyers faced little competition in

securing th eir workforce. Educational expansion created a ballooning p opu lation of

second ary and post-second ary stud ents who w ere willing and eager to take on part-

time jobs and see themselves as only temp orary service workers. The long h istory of

assigning you th to menial service tasks in other word s, the pre -existing ageist,

patriarchal or seniority-based structure of w ork d iscussed earlier prov ided service

emp loyers with a w idely accepted set of practices and ideologies with w hich they could

expand and entrench a ghettoized you th labor market.

By the start of the twen ty-first centu ry, many low end service emp loyers were

deliberately constructing all of the jobs they offered a s being exp licitly you th jobs even

wh en these jobs were being held by ind ividuals who were no longer teenagers and n o

longer in school (Klein 1999). When a grou p of Bord ers Books and Music Store

emp loyees, most of wh om were in th eir 20s, tried to un ionize w ith the UFCW du ring

the late 1990s, for example, their employer sent ou t the following resp onse in its

mon thly new sletter:

We have high ly edu cated emp loyees who consider th emselves professionals,

bu t wh o are in reality working a t an early level retail job. Ultimately, each person

mu st make a choice w ithin th e moda lities of the possible. If you d esire an


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enjoyable job w hile you figure ou t wh at to d o w ith your life, this is a good p lace

to be. But if you try to make a career path out of something w hich can never be a

well-paying job, you will be up against an impossible task because of all of the

economic constraints in the retail ind ustry . (quoted in Slaugh ter 1997: 3)

As Naom i Klein (1999: 232-233) writes, service sector workers are increasingly being

treated as if they are not real workers and as if the jobs they hold are no m ore than

hobby jobs: Most of the large emp loyers in the service sector manage their

workforce as if their clerks did nt dep end on their paychecks for anything essential,

such as rent or child su pp ort. Instead , retail and service emp loyers tend to view th eir

emp loyees as children: stud ents looking for summer jobs, spend ing money or a qu ick

stopover on th e road to a m ore fulfilling and better-paying career. Never mind that

the service sector is now filled with w orkers wh o hav e mu ltiple university d egrees,

imm igrants unable to find m anu facturing jobs, laid-off nu rses and teachers, and

dow nsized midd le man agers. Never mind , too, that the students wh o do work in retail

and fast food as many of them d o are facing higher tu ition costs, less financial

assistance from p arents and governmen t and more years in school.

Consum erism and the Comm odification of Youth

The Kinkos, Starbucks and Blockbuster clerks buy their uniforms of khakis and white or

blue shirts at the Gap; the Hi! Welcome to the Gap! greeting cheer is fueled by

Starbucks double espressos; the rsums that got them the jobs were designed at Kinkos

on friendly Macs, in 12-point Helvetica on Microsoft Word. The troops show up for work

smelling of CK One (except at Starbucks, where colognes and perfumes are thought to

compete with the romance of coffee aroma), their faces freshly scrubbed with Body Shop

Blue Corn Mask, before leaving apartments furnished with Ikea self-assembled bookcasesand coffee tables.

- Naomi Klein (1999)No Logo


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There is a strong sense of circularity in mu ch youth emp loyment, pa rticularly in

the retail sector. Youth often seem to work wh ere they shop and shop w here they work.

Their p altry wages seem to cycle back inescapably to their employers through their

end less pu rchase of overpriced consum er goods that they themselves are hired to

market and m ove. Dressed in the same typ es of clothing they are selling, and eating the

same kinds of food they are serving, the lines between consum er and worker in the

lives of contemp orary you th frequently seem to blur.

Such circularity in youth em ploym ent, of course, is anything but accidental. The

spread of mass consumerism in p ost-war Am erica and the ram pan t fetishization and

commod ification of youth in m ass advertising h as created an ap paren tly endless

deman d for and sup ply of young service sector workers. Service sector emp loyers hireyoun g workers because youth is what sells their prod uct ind eed, youth often is the

real prod uct that is being sold, w hether a business is ostensibly haw king jeans or t-

shirts, sneakers or snow board s, soft drinks or CDs (Giroux 1997; Klein 1999). Retail and

food service companies routinely exploit the sexuality of young w orkers (women

especially) in order to attract custom ers and increase sales. More genera lly, employer s

staff their stores by hiring youn g workers who have the right look they screen, in

their recruitment an d hiring p rocess, for an ap pearance, attitude an d dem eanor that is

strongly age, gender, race and class based.

As the distinction for service sector employer s vanishes betw een ad vertising

youth and hiring youth, young w orkers find themselves literally becoming w alking,

talking billboard s (Klein 1994). Abercrombie and Fitch, a national clothing chain that is

heavily oriented to the youth consumer m arket, represents an extreme example of the

general trend . The company no longer hires cashiers or clerks but instead refers to its

young employees as brand representatives:

Exhibiting the A&F Look is a tremend ously importan t p art of the overall

experience at the Abercrombie & Fitch Stores. We are selling an experience for

our customer; an energized store environmen t creates an atmosph ere that peop le

want to experience again and again. The combination of our Brand


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Representatives style and our Stores Visual Presentation has brou ght brand

recognition across the country. Our people in the store are an inspiration to the

customer. The customer sees the natural Abercrombie style and wants to be like

the Brand Representative. Brand Representatives will do just what the title

suggests: represent the Abercrombie brand to the customer. Our Brand is

natu ral, classic and curren t, with an emph asis on style. This is what a BrandRepresentative mu st be; this is wh at a Brand Representative mu st present in

ord er to fulfill the cond itions of emp loymen t. (A bercrombie Look Book: Guidelines

for Brand Representatives of Abercrombie & Fitch, boldface in original)

Abercrombie & Fitch, writes a young college stud ent (White 1997), entices us into their

store with employees who are our peers. In fact, our p eers have been scouted

probably on campus and chosen to sell an image back to us. College studen ts are the

featured mod els in the hu ge posters adorning th e walls of the shop , and w e flock to

Abercrom bie in large nu mbers to get a piece of the look for ourselves. Another college

stud ent and Abercrombie & Fitch em ployee describes the ou tlet w here he works:

Every Brand Rep is between th e age of 18 and 23, attractive, slender and always

dressed well. Abercrombie imposes extremely strict rules concerning the p hysical

app earance of their Brand Reps. Although n owh ere is it written on paper, few w ill

d isagree that good looks are an essential attribu te to possess in ord er to be em ployed .

In fact, there are countless rumors of managers being confronted by people higher in

man agement because their store employees are n ot adequately attractive (Cavenay

2000).

If service sector emp loyers hire young w orkers because it helps them build a

preferred image and sell their particular p rodu ct, youn g w orkers, likewise, often seek

ou t certain retail and service jobs over oth ers because of their desire to be associated

with an idealized compan y image (or logo) and, more materially, because of their

interest in obtaining price reductions and give-aways on m uch sough t after brands of

clothing and other heavily marketed comm odities. While preferences vary by time,

place and peer group , youth in any neighborhood in the coun try can tell you w hat are

cool and un cool p laces for local youth to work working at Starbucks and Banana

Repu blic may be in for the mom ent, wh ile jobs at McDonalds and Target may be


17/24

decidedly ou t (John son 2001; Newm an 1999). Employers such as The Gap commonly

find that they are able to attract youn g w orkers even in a tight labor market, and even

withou t raising wage offers much above the legal minimum , by holding out the

seemingly irresistible lure of prom ised clothing d iscounts (Reuters/ CBS 2000).

The link between you th consumerism and youth em ployment has sometimes

been singled ou t for censure as a telling ind ictment of the state of youth in the

contemp orary U.S. Youn g peop le work, some worry, for no better reason than to feed

their ravenous app etites for expensive, luxury consumer items that they d ont really

need ; you th emp loyment, some fear, has become, by the start of the twen ty-first

century, closely linked with growing materialism, self-indulgence and frivolity among

the nations youn ger generations (see, for examp le, Greenberger and Steinberg 1986). Itis critically imp ortant to p ut concerns about youth consumerism in p roper p erspective

for otherwise, these kinds of sentiments lead all too easily to youth bashing and the

prod uction of inaccurate and unjust youth stereotyp es. As Mike Males (1999) points

ou t, consumerism is by no means a specifically you th p henom enon. It is all too

common for social commentators to sound the alarm over grow ing youth consumerism

wh ile comp letely ignoring an even larger growth in adu lt consumerism. As Males

(1999: 274) reminds u s:

Adults, includ ing paren ts and teachers, spend $5 trillion p er year on personal

consump tion, including $100 billion on a lcohol an d tobacco, $40 billion on

jewelry, $45 billion on sports su pp lies, and $90 billion on video and aud io

prod ucts (includ ing 600 million ad ult movie rentals). American adults spend

three times more ($300 billion per year) on clothes and accessories than on th eir

own edu cation. American adults gamble half a trillion d ollars per year, an

amou nt equal to the total national, state, and local spend ing on all primary,

second ary, and higher ed ucation. Wheres the liberal tongue-clucking on that

moral barometer?

Youth consumerism, furth ermore, is deliberately man ufactured and man ipulated by an

enorm ous, ad ult-led, rou nd -the-clock army of advertisers, marketing consultants and

you th researcher s (Klein 1999; PBS Frontline 2001). Teens are exploited , as Cyn thia


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Peters (2001) pu ts it succinctly, from both d irections in the retail world as cheap labor

and as a demograph ic to be analyzed, probed and minutely nurtured as consumers.

When th eyre not w orking the cash register as an em ployee, we seem to expect them to

be working it from the other end purchasing a steady flow of brand nam e goods that

keep m arketers drooling over the current teen baby boom.

The stereotype of the youth w orker in discussions of youth emp loyment and

consumerism, finally, tend s to be an image of a mid dle-class fifteen or sixteen year old,

still living at home, getting h is or her first experience in the w orkforce, earn ing som e

extra pocket money, and hav ing no real financial needs (Tann ock and Flocks 2002).

As I have wr itten elsewh ere, this stereotype of the affluen t, midd le-class teenage

worker obscures the fact that, in the United States, there is a sizable grou p of teenageworkers from working-class and p oor family background s whose minimu m w age

earnings constitute critical finan cial supplem ents to the well-being of their parenta l

families and hou seholds (Tann ock 2001: 2-3). The stereotyp e of the m idd le-class,

fifteen or sixteen year old w orker also obscures the fact that m ost of the w orkers who

we w ould th ink of today as being you th w orkers are actually in their late teens and

twenties. These you th are often working to pay rent, cover college tuition, meet

personal expenses, help ou t their parents and sup port their children (Tannock and

Flocks 2002). In other word s, wh ile they may be d rowning in consum erism like the rest

of us, most young w orkers unden iably hav e serious financial concerns that d rive them

to seek employment un der the limited circumstances available to youth and youn g

adu lts in the contemp orary U.S.

Conclusion

Improving th e generally poor working cond itions of young w orkers in the low

end service sector is critically imp ortan t not just for the interests of youth , but for

adult workers as well. Employers have a long history of exploiting divisions within the

workforce, along the lines of race, ethn icity, gend er, as well as age. When service sector


19/24

emp loyers decide that th ey prefer to hire youth because they feel that they can pay

them less, work them hard er or exploit their youthful appearan ce, adult and youth

workers alike suffer: indeed , ad ult workers may find them selves being d isplaced and

pu t out of work by an exploited teen and you th work force. The easy access of low end

service emp loyers to large, cheap an d d isposable pools of stud ent w orkers exerts

industry-wide d ownw ard pressure on wages and working conditions.

Improving w orking cond itions for working you th and by extension, for all

workers throu ghou t the low end service sector requires, however, a robust

un derstand ing of wh y working youth work where they do. Too often we seek answers

to this question in narr ow, unidimen sional and localized fashion at worst, we hear

social commentators invoke internalized, psychologistic factors that reproduceprejudicial stereotypes of youth and function to h old you th respon sible for their own

workp lace and labor market difficulties (Tannock 2001). What I have sought to

demonstrate in this brief discussion is that ad dressing the p osition of youth in the

workforce requires an ap proach tha t is at once historical and global. Issues that need to

considered by edu cators, policy makers, youth and labor activists when th inking about

working you th includ e: the changing cond itions within the service sector workp lace

itself; the struggles and transformations that are occur ring within the man ufacturing

sector; the besieged and constricted state of pu blic sector employm ent; the explosive

growth of edu cational participation rates across the U.S. popu lation; the spread of mass

consumerism and advertising; as well as the age-old ph enomenon of age-based

discrimination in the w orkplace.

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