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Work study
Hatton explores sociology of work
Erie Hatton’s first book, “The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America,” examined the temporary help industry and its adverse effects on the economy and workers. Photo: DOUGLAS LEVERE
Work and workers are the central themes in sociologist Erin Hatton’s research. But perhaps even more central to her research are the dignity and protection of vulnerable populations.
In studying work and those making, or struggling to make, a living from it, Hatton’s research also extends into the fields of gender, race, labor, political economy and public policy.
Her first book, “The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America,” examined the temporary help industry and its adverse effects on the economy and workers. As the temporary help industry grew, she found, so did its model of work cast employees as profit-busting liabilities.
With the assistance of a Humanities Institute fellowship, Hatton is developing her second book, tentatively titled “Working But Not Employed: Work and the Struggle for Worker Rights Beyond the Boundaries of the Law.” The book examines three categories of workers who do not count as “employees” under employment laws: domestic workers, prisoner workers and welfare recipients required to work in exchange for public assistance, known as “workfare.”
Domestic workers were excluded from protection under employment laws as far back as the 1930s, largely to appease Southern politicians, but also because it would have been difficult to force private households—where the domestic help often lived—to adhere to minimum-wage and overtime laws and, later, OSHA standards. However, in New York State in 2010, domestic workers won nearly full legal coverage, becoming “employees” under the law for the first time in U.S. history.
As for prisoners, the courts state that incarcerated workers are not in an employment relationship—they’re said to be working for rehabilitation, or punishment. The case is similar for welfare workers, says Hatton. “They are said to be getting ‘work experience,’ but they are not considered ‘employees’—even though they may be doing the same work as many unionized municipal employees.”
In studying these workers, Hatton wants to examine how social inequities based on race, gender and class have contributed to their exclusion from employment laws, as well as how their exclusion from employment protections has contributed to their social marginalization. To study these and other themes, she plans to interview up to 50 workers in each category in New York State.
What does she anticipate finding?
“I suspect that being excluded from legal protections in the workplace has a range of consequences for these workers. For instance, I suspect that it affects their ability to take advantage of many basic citizenship rights. When you’re not treated as a whole worker, when you don’t even earn the minimum wage—which doesn’t support a single person, let alone a family, here in Buffalo—then there are going to be so many aspects of their lives that are affected—not as a trickle-down, but as a flood effect.
“Furthermore, when employers are able to exploit one sector of the labor market, it also makes things worse for everybody else. It exerts downward pressure on wages and labor standards for all workers.”
If the positive reception to last year’s publication of “The Temp Economy” is any indication, Hatton’s new book is in line to cast a long shadow on this non-employee sector and its impact.
The assistant professor admits she came to sociology via “a very twisty path.” A native of Georgia, she was the product of an English professor father of British descent, whom she describes as the “classic academic,” and a mother who originally was a social worker and later an editor of a literary magazine.
In college, Hatton found a passion for writing and literature, earning a degree in that subject at a small liberal-arts college. But she also found a growing love of sociology through several college courses and a two-year, postgraduate stint in the Peace Corps in Africa.
After pursuing her master’s and doctorate in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she found herself in Buffalo, where her husband, David Herzberg, had accepted a faculty position in UB’s Department of History. She wrote her dissertation at her new home, earned her PhD, had a child and was offered a visiting faculty position in the UB sociology department in 2008. Two years later, she became an assistant professor on the tenure track.
Hatton embraces her role in the department. She describes UB sociology as a very up-and-coming department. “We’re really trending upward with a lot of energy, a lot of young scholars and a lot of potential,” she says, noting the department’s collegial and collaborative environment. She points to an article she authored with colleague Mary Nell Trautner, “Equal Opportunity Objectification? The Sexualization of Men and Women on the Cover of Rolling Stone,” which garnered substantial press after its publication last year.
Hatton also embraces life here with her family, which includes stepsons Rex, 14, and Leo, 12—both City Honors students—and Felix, 4-1/2, about to start kindergarten. “We have a gorgeous house in a gorgeous neighborhood in the city, with all kinds of diverse and interesting neighbors. It’s really a nice, easy place to live,” she says, adding, “Buffalo is great—it’s an undersold city. And UB is a great institution as well.”
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