Divide and rule in low wage jobs
In many ways, retail and hospitality appear comparable from a worker’s perspective: minimum wage, high rates of casualisation and low rates of unionisation.
However, working in kitchen, I found a strong sense of cohesion among workers. We shared the same complaints: long hours, low pay and a boss constantly peering over our shoulders. There were few tools they could use to drive a wedge between us. But union organising was hard. There is no freedom in a kitchen. The boss can hear every word.
Moving into retail, I was looking forward to having some room, not having a boss constantly patronise me, stand over me yelling: “Work harder, work faster.” I thought it would be an easier place to build the union. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Retail is worse.
The retail sector has perfected the art of divide and rule without needing a boss to be physically present most of the time. A “key performance indicator” (KPI) system pressures staff to meet the expectations of the boss without them once having to yell at you to work harder. The system is cruelly stressful and encourages competition between workers. Meet your KPIs or lose your job.
KPIs are shamelessly profit based, and data recording is thorough. Low sales are blamed on workers. Even on low trading days, perhaps because of the weather or an event occurring that day, failure to meet targets is attributed to poor sales techniques. This puts jobs at stake.
The worst KPI is the “personal budget target”, which could also be called “how much money you have to make for the boss every day”. The result of having a personal target is that workers begin to fight one another for sales. It’s seen in workers jumping into the sale as soon as a customer walks through the door or in a practice called “stealing the sale”, where one worker edges another out of their conversation with a customer.
Subtle divisions like this are naturalised as everyday scenarios. So while most staff frown upon practices like “sale stealing”, the anxieties induced by KPIs drive this kind of competition.
And at the end of a long day of seeking individual rewards for meeting company targets, workers can’t leave the shop without one final act of turning on each other. It is a requirement, common in many stores, for workers to search each other’s bags in view of security cameras. Theft, or failure to report theft, results in immediate termination.
These systems limit the ability of retail workers to organise collectively. This is their design. However, they are not new. Bosses have always employed these tactics, and workers have always found ways to overcome them.
Solidarity and rank and file organising on the shop or kitchen floor are important. But retail and hospitality unions also need to be more present in these workplaces to encourage workers in the fight for decent work conditions.
