Cheap Labor: The New Politics of “Bread and Roses” in Industrial Democracies

In this article we aim to return labor (particularly the most vulnerable members of the labor market) to the core of the comparative political economy of advanced democracies. We formulate a framework with which to conceptualize cheap labor in advanced democracies. We propose that to understand the politics of cheap labor, the weakest members of the labor market need to be divided into two structural groups: those in standard and those in nonstandard employment. Standard cheap labor includes “regular jobs” while nonstandard cheap labor includes low-cost, flexible, and temporary jobs. We show that the use of cheap labor is significant in all industrialized democracies but that there are important contrasts in how different economies use cheap labor. We argue that there is a trade-off between standard and nonstandard cheap labor. Countries that satisfy their need for cheap labor through standard employment do not develop large nonstandard sectors of their economies. Countries that do not promote cheap labor in the standard sector, on the other hand, end up relying on an army of nonstandard workers to meet their cheap labor needs.