A Fair Day's Wages: Liberty, Legality, and Liability Among Denver's Day Laborers

<p>Day laborers occupy an essential position in Denver’s booming construction industry. Day laborers make up a highly flexible, highly effective workforce able to respond to market changes. For day laborers, informal day-labor gathering points provide increased control over working hours and employee-employer relationships when compared to traditional wage labor. Still, recent legislation and policies around irregular migration has forced large numbers of workers who may have benefited from the stability of full-time regular employment into the informal sector. The day laborers’ flexibility also exposes them to employers constantly inventing ways to deny them the wages and benefits they are owed. Despite changes in Colorado law in attempts to strengthen workers’ recourse against their employers, and despite social and individual tactics day laborers employ to mitigate their vulnerability, systematic structural, symbolic, and everyday violence continue to advantage employers.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Bowman, Camden Ryan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Aaron Schneider, Ph.D.
• Rebecca Galemba
• Sarah Hamilton
• Nancy Reichman

• Construction
• Day labor
• Immigration
• Precarity
• Structural violence
• Undocumented
• Latin American Languages and Societies
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Work, Economy and Organizations

Statement dc:rights

• <p>Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.</p>

Language dc:language

en

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1012

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.du.edu:etd-2011