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Retail on the "Dole": Parasitic Employers and Women Workers

In the late 1990s a growing number of adults in the United States were employed in low-paying, de-skilled retail industry jobs without health insurance or other benefits, a trend that affects poor women with children most adversely. This article analyzes the proliferation of such employment using concepts borrowed from Beatrice and Sidney Webb's analysis of taxpayer subsidies to parasitic industries, proposing that such subsidies be replaced by government regulation to ensure living wages and legislation to promote unionization of low wage jobs. The 1996 welfare reform is briefly critiqued, focusing on employer tax credits initiated in conjunction with the reform. The author's analysis of mid-1990s Current Population Survey data shows that 76 percent of non-supervisory and production workers in the retail industry were not covered by employer-provided health insurance.