How are people coerced to work? How do we view “workers”?

Aaron Freiwald, Managing Partner of Freiwald Law and host of the weekly podcast, Good Law | Bad Law, is joined by sociology professor and author, Dr. Erin Hatton, to discuss the issues of coercion, work, power dynamics and imbalance, as well as Dr. Hatton’s new book on the topic and how it relates to today’s COVID-19 pandemic.

In today’s episode, Aaron and Erin talk about how power is used, wielded, and abused in the context of work. What do prison laborers, graduate students, welfare workers, and college athletes have in common? Erin argues that they all are part of a growing workforce of coerced laborers. Erin and Aaron explore this in depth, examining the different types of coercion and how these definitions are applied in varying situations. Coerced analyzes these four groups of workers and their experiences that differ from the traditional understanding of “employment.” Erin’s book considers how these groups function differently as their “workplace” offers no standard set of protections and they are subject to intense punitive power, reaching beyond the abilities to simply hire and fire.

Throughout her book and today’s conversation, Dr. Hatton contends that coercion is a defining feature of work in America today. How do we return to work as restrictions lift but fear and concern of COVID remain? Aaron and Erin touch on this and more, touching on the subjects of labor/employment laws, social distancing and working remotely, consequences and work relations, laboring and bureaucracy, the notion of meaningful work, as well as the idea of laboring for the monetary gain of others, public assistance, and the importance of training, education, and skill building.

As an associate professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Dr. Hatton’s research focuses on the sociology of work, while also extending into the fields of social inequality, race and gender, culture, labor, law, and social policy. Erin is also the author of The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America and is editor of Prison/Work: Labor in the Carceral State; The Temp Economy weaves together gender, race, class, and work in a cultural analysis of the temporary help industry and the rise of the new economy, while Prison/Work is an interdisciplinary volume that examines the multiple and multi-directional intersections between mass incarceration, labor, and employment in the U.S. today.

To check out Erin’s new book, Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment, please click here.

To learn more about Erin, please visit her website here. 

Host: Aaron Freiwald

Guest: Dr. Erin Hatton

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