Class Formation in the Workplace

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Abstract
Efforts to operationalize “ownership” in class formation research have emphasized diferences in power among ownership categories and have neglected the crucial question of whether an individual works for profit or for a wage. The importance of this variable is highlighted with data from the Boston taxi industry in which drivers differ little in control over their work but differ greatly in the way their work is compensated. In recent years, fleet owners have consciously manipulated these differences to displace a unionized labor force that drives for commissions with ostensibly self-employed drivers who rent their cabs by the shift.