janitors, security guards or tech support, said
David Weil, dean of the Heller School of Social
Policy and Management at Brandeis University
and a former administrator of the Wage and
Hour Division of the Labor Department in the
Obama administration.
Weil documented the practice in his 2014 book
“The Fissured Workplace”: Companies hire
outside firms to do work formerly done in-house.
These outside companies hire people at lower
pay with fewer benefits and job protections.
In some cases, work is further outsourced to
still other companies. Sometimes, workers
are hired as contractors, who are technically
self-employed yet often report to the same
workplace as full-fledged employees.
An example is the hotel industry. Weil’s research
found that many major brands have sold nearly
all their real estate and shifted to a franchise
system. The properties — now owned by private
equity firms, investor groups and real estate
investment trusts — pay a franchise fee to
brands such as Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt.
They often then contract with a third-party
management company to run the hotel. That
company might hire staffing firms to provide
housekeeping, maintenance and food service.
In some cases, Weil said, it’s possible that not
a single worker in a Hilton hotel is actually a
Hilton employee, though they must adhere to
Hilton’s standards.
“You might have 10 different employers,
sometimes with overlapping authority, all in that
building,” he said.
Uber and Instacart are other examples of
the fissured workplace. So are universities
that increasingly rely on adjunct professors
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