Summary Of The Chapter The Symbolic Leverage Of Labor

Jennifer Chun in her chapter “The Symbolic Leverage of Labor,” discusses the powers which workers, especially marginalized workers hold, and strategies through which the workers can increase their power. In this paper, I will first discuss the impact of globalization on declining structural power. Then, I will discuss how changing public perception in classification struggles and public dramas can be used to increase symbolic power. Finally, I will show through classification struggles and public drama how the politics of redistribution and politics of recognition are intertwined. According to Chun, the structural power of workers has declined due to globalization, and the consequent shift to service-based economy. Structural power is

Symbolic power is the “politics of perception,” and workers can utilize this power by changing public perception on the issue, and then mobilize the public to make an impact (Chun, pg.13). This symbolic power is especially useful for marginalized workers as it can translate into symbolic leverage, which strengthens the associational power of marginalized workers. Marginalized workers often have weak associational power, which is the power to labor rights, unionize, and forming alliances with other groups. One of the struggles of marginalized workers is them not being defined as employees according to the law, and therefore they end up losing their labor rights. Classification struggles is when workers attempt to redefine what it means to be an employee, not according to the law, but according to public opinion (Chun pg. 16-18). An example of this would be when sweatshop workers for Forever 21 were told that they were told they were employees of the subcontractor rather than Forever 21. A campaign was raised to spread awareness of this incident to redefine what it means to be an employee according to the public opinion (Gutierrez, 2/18/2016). By redefining the meaning in social world, a legitimacy is given to the struggles,

Struggles for redistribution seek “to transfer economic power from elites to achieve greater equality and fairness of society,” while struggles for recognition seek “respect and acknowledgement for the dignity, humanity and value of a group of people.” (Gutierrez, 2/18/2016) In classification struggles the workers’ main plight is to redefine the boundries which determine who is an employee. These struggles focus on achieving the economic benefits that come with being labeled as an employee ranging from health insurance to retirement funds, but have been denied due to lack of collective labor rights. So in classification struggles the main objective is to redistribute economic power to get more equality in society, however this is intertwined with the cultural inequality, where some people are considered inferior than other (Chun pg.16-17). In the classification struggles against Forever 21, most of the piece-workers were poor, immigrants, or illegal residents (Gutierrez, 2/18/2016). The workers were mainly asking for benefits that come with being labeled as employees, but alongside this there was also a struggle to be respected as equal human beings because this “economic marginalization often entails overcoming ‘institutionalized patterns of cultural value that constitute some actors as inferior,” or invisible.