Reviews

In an article entitled “Why the Government Is Coming After Your Clients,” in Staffing Success magazine, Edward A. Lenz says that “The Fissured Workplace raises many complex issues, and efforts to address the concerns expressed in the book will be fraught with challenges—driven by the sheer volume and variation of arrangements involving workers in widely diverse job settings, and by the multitude of existing workplace laws and regulations affecting those relationships at every level of government.” [Read the article.]

In The New York Review of Books, Robert Kuttner called The Fissured Workplace an “authoritative new book” that “…shed[s] important new light on the resurgence of the power of finance and its connection to the debasement of work and income distribution.” [Read more.]

“The patterns of workplace culture have been undermined and changed hugely over the last three decades, but the shifts explored in The Fissured Workplace add a new and urgent dimension. What Weil describes is nothing less than the breaking down of any sort of medium or long term stability for workers.” 
—Tim Strangleman, Portside

“Weil’s work on fissuring resonates with personal experience, reinforced by the many examples he presents.”
—John S. Ahlquist, Perspectives on Politics

“What makes this book particularly interesting is how it integrates the labour problems associated with subcontracting, franchising, and supply chain management into a cohesive framework and provides an overarching set of recommendations to solve them. Contrary to scholars who treat these organizational forms in isolation, Weil shows how they are related, and how shifting our focus to the strategic regulation of key firms could make a significant difference to the lives of many workers within and outside of the United States.”
—Sean O’Brady, Relations industrielles/Industrial Relations. [Download a pdf of the article.]

“…The Fissured Workplace is a timely and invaluable contribution that will help researchers, practitioners and policymakers more fully comprehend the changing nature of work in the twenty-first century. Firm decisions to shed activities have important implications for business organization and employment.…Weil’s analysis and policy prescriptions provide the first essential steps on the journey down the yellow brick road.“
—Tashlin Lakhani, British Journal of Industrial Relations

“Weil’s analysis helps us understand the new relations of production, how fissuring exacerbates worker exclusion from production control, and erodes collective capacity to influence, or disrupt, production activities on a significant scale.”
—Timothy J. Bartkiw, Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal

“Since Weil is not only a scholar of workplace organization but also a student of efforts to regulate employment conditions, he offers a sophisticated and detailed program to remedy the worst impacts of fissuring through strategic enforcement of legislation and regulation and thoughtful proposals to address gaps or confusions in the law produced by changing economic and organiza­tional realities 
—David Bensman, The Journal of Labor & Society 

“David Weil uses the word “fissuring” to describe the new increasingly subcontracted labor market and how companies disadvantage workers by outsourcing to low-wage subcontractors. Fissuring is the new rule, not the exception, in the contemporary labor market. We need a better understanding of fissuring in theory and practice. Weil’s book, The Fissured Workplace, is a good start.”
—Richard Freeman, Perspectives on Work [Download a pdf of the article.]

“The kinds of workplace fissuring discussed here—subcontracting, franchising and global supply chains—have been the subjects of a number of studies detailing the employment effects that Weil describes. The Fissured Workplace is unusual in bringing this research together into an integrated, detailed and decidedly policy-oriented analysis. Through linking organizational strategies that share an underlying logic, it makes a compelling case that workplace fissuring should be given a more prominent place in analyses of the causes of growing inequality. Along the way, Weil shows that fissuring constitutes a fundamental and formidable challenge to existing employment regulations… It makes a convincing case that the better regulation of fissured workplaces is a first step towards reversing the erosion of pay and conditions at the bottom of the labor market.”
—Virginia Doellgast, Times Higher Education 
[See entire review.]

“No one has done more solid or extensive empirical research on these issues than the book’s author. Moreover, no one has worked more directly with state and federal officials and with business and labor groups in designing and implementing new regulatory strategies that might address the challenges necessitated by these changes in organizational form. Weil draws on his research and experience to describe the current mix of organizational forms that fit the fissuring phenomenon, to document the effects of fissuring on employment standards and outcomes, and to suggest ways to update public policies and enforcement strategies to catch up with these new organizational forms.”
—Thomas A. Kochan, MIT, ILRReview
[See entire review.]

“The Fissured Workplace paints a striking picture of the underside of the U.S. labor market: the workers who service expensive hotels but need food stamps and income support for their families to survive; the ‘independent contractors’ who clean office buildings under contracts that pay below minimum wages; and hundreds of thousands of others struggling in an economy where you work not for branded name companies in the open light but for subcontractors behind the scenes. Weil documents the growth of the fissured labor market, tells us how it contributes to the impoverishment of America, and offers ways to make matters better. You will think differently about the world of work after reading this marvelous book.”
—Richard B. Freeman, Harvard University

“The book persuasively argues that widening income inequality has less to do with technological innovations and more to do with organizational innovations. The deep dive that Weil does on subcontracting, franchising, and supply chains is a must-read for anyone interested in how these practices have affected pay and working conditions. He goes beyond just documenting what is happening and presents a detailed proposal on how and why we need to mend, through legislation and enforcement, the increasingly fissured relationship between workers and their employers.”
—Lisa M. Lynch, Dean, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University

“With insight and precision, David Weil has brought to light the shell game played by so many modern business organizations. Today, the company whose logo is on your work shirt, smock, or ID badge may not be the one that recruits, hires, manages, pays, disciplines and sometimes even houses you. This fracturing of the basic employer–employee relationship is reshaping lives and industries. If there’s one book you should read about work today, this is it.”
—Richard Trumka, President of the AFL–CIO

“Many books on the economy devote 99 percent of the book to how horrible things are and very little space (usually the last few pages) to generic solutions. Weil’s book, on the other hand, devotes a full third to creative ways to deal with fissuring.”
—Scott Schneider, Laborers’ Health & Safety Fund of North America
[See entire review.]

“David Weil’s new book on the fragmenting of internal labor markets in many American industries, The Fissured Workplace, should be read by all who wish to understand how the challenges to enforcing laws designed to protect American workers have become greater as the institutional structures and processes through which American businesses produce and deliver goods and services have continued to evolve.”
—Michael C. Harper, Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)
[See entire review.]