The Moral Economy of Wages: A France-Quebec Comparison of the Rhetorics on Wage-Fairness among Teachers
This article puts forward a pluralist theoretical framework to analyze the moral economy of wages. We use this framework to examine the perception of wage-fairness perceptions of teachers from Quebec and France. The general research question is: What rhetoric is used to judge the wage-fairness or denounce wage-related injustices? Theoretically, we propose an analytical framework according to which the actors construct rhetorics of justice by combining four secondary norms (rights, needs, investments and market) with two primary principles (equality and differentiation). Our framework first enables us to take into account the hierarchy of norms, from the most equalizing to the most differentiating. Our framework also systematizes the idea of the instrumental malleability of norms: the rights and the needs can be perverted in a differentiating orientation and the market subverted in an equalizing orientation. Methodologically, we analyze electronic testimonials from teachers in France and Quebec, from primary to higher education. The twofold heuristic interest of the corpus is, on the one hand, the inclusion of employees with unequal pay systems and, on the other hand, the comparison of two national contexts. We explore both the themes and the semantic fields of wage justifications and denunciations. The analysis confirms that teachers use a plurality of rhetorics related to the perception of injustice. It shows a hierarchical continuum of logics of perceptions of injustice: teachers who are higher in the statutory salary hierarchy are more likely to mobilize differentiating norms. Empirical analysis also leads us to identify distinct rhetorics from each national context. It shows that these rhetorics correspond specifically to the subversive use of the market norm and the perverted use of the rights or needs norms. Finally, we show that the most privileged teachers pervert the norms of rights and needs to preserve their advantages.