Reading Mike: Assessing Work Law and Policy in an Age of Global Capital What's Next? A Matrix for the Grey Zone
During the last quarter of a prolific and distinguished career, the late legal scholar Mike Zimmer turned his attention to international and comparative employment law. The works he produced in his global period are an assessment of labor and employment law and policy in an age of global capital, and a window on his values and concerns. In a series of compelling articles, Zimmer normatively interrogated neoliberalism by assessing its effects on working people. Neoliberal assumptions treat human labor as just another factor of production, and prescribe minimal government intervention regarding workplace rights, protections, and conditions. Individual firms freely seek to lower their labor costs through enterprise disaggregation, creating short term and impermanent relationships with individual workers, hiring independent contractors, and making use of global supply chains. The results in the United States are extraordinary levels of economic inequality and insecurity. Referencing the legal and policy innovations of other countries, Zimmer demanded American law and policymakers be held accountable, and argued that a failure to reverse course threatened our democratic political system.Building on Zimmer's insights, this essay offers a way to understand the state and its role in producing the fundamental labor market transformations we are witnessing. To that end, the essay addresses two questions. First, in what way do government efforts contribute to or, on the other hand, forestall the decline of the standard employment relationship? Second, how does the state destabilize or, on the other hand, shore up labor standards and status distinctions among working people? To answer those questions, a systematic method of assessing work law and policy is proposed. Using the concept of the "grey zone," as developed by Projet ZOGRIS, a multi national study of the rise of insecure employment, a seven factor matrix reveals the way the state plays a paradoxical role in the growth of nonstandard work and increasing precariousness. Through action and inaction, the government creates contested territory, complicates its role as a promulgator and enforcer of labor standards, and generates inequalities among workers in terms of the rights, benefits, and protections they are or should be entitled to. While the matrix is a tool for indicting the actions of law and policymakers, it also reveals praiseworthy efforts, and identifies a repertoire of actions available to the state, which can be used to improve the working conditions of its people.