ABSTRACT
Retail workers have differed in important ways from other, more studied groups of workers in industrial sectors. Unionisation efforts in retailing, while they have had some success in Europe, have been largely unsuccessful in the United States, with union penetration always lower than in most industries. In addition, most of the struggles in the history of retailing have been about hours and working conditions rather than issues of pay. Finally, while the rise of the Internet and the increasing numbers of part-time workers in retailing have been serious challenges for retail workers’ job security, globalisation and other forms of mechanisation have had results in retailing far less threatening to workers than they have in other industries. Partly because of these important differences, retail workers’ history provides a unique opportunity for historians to think about what those differences can tell us; conversely, by examining retail workers’ role in consumption, we capture a fundamental part of the history of retailing and consumption.
