Unpredictable Work Schedules: As Companies Shave Costs With Just-In-Time Scheduling, Workers, Regulators Fight Back
Unpredictable Work Schedules: As Companies Shave Costs With Just-In-Time Scheduling, Workers, Regulators Fight Back
Brianna Roy-Rankin, 23, is just the kind of worker Target would like to retain and promote. She says she loved her job...
Brianna Roy-Rankin, 23, is just the kind of worker Target would like to retain and promote. She says she loved her job at the retailer's store in Champaign, Illinois. She had great bosses, got along well with her co-workers and enjoyed the employee discounts. But last week, after two years as a sales associate, Roy-Rankin quit her job.
“I couldn’t really plan. I was at the mercy of the scheduling system,” she says. “Otherwise, I honestly, probably, would’ve stayed.”
Roy-Rankin went to college nearby, at the University of Illinois. Before she graduated in May, she says it was a constant challenge to balance her studies and social life with her part-time job -- usually around 20 hours a week at just under $10 an hour.
Target has an unforgiving scheduling system. Roy-Rankin says she would have to submit requests to take time off for spring break or visit her parents weeks, if not months in advance -- otherwise she’d be slotted to work without recourse. She would learn about her weekly work schedule three weeks in advance, which wasn’t too bad. But then her hours would fluctuate drastically. One week, she’d be scheduled for a 8 a.m.-to-noon shift on a particular day; the next, it might be a 5 p.m.-to-11 p.m. closing shift. Eventually, it became too much to juggle.
Roy-Rankin's situation is hardly unique.
A Common Trend
Nearly three in 10 hourly workers in the United States say they rarely get consistent work schedules, according to a study released Tuesday by WorkJam, a firm that specializes in workforce scheduling technology.
What’s more, an astounding 56 percent say they get their schedules a week or less in advance. Both trends run rampant in the fast-growing service sector, especially in low-wage fields like retail and fast food. And while policies of this sort save companies money by allowing them to tailor schedules to an expected flow of customer traffic, workers say it's the source of headaches.
Joshua Ostrega, chief operating officer and co-founder of WorkJam, admits the 56 percent figure came as a bit of a shock. “I think it’s extremely high,” he says. “We were actually quite surprised.”
Workers Employed in the Retail Trade Industries (Seasonally Adjusted) | FindTheData
An especially harsh practice among retailers is what’s known as just-in-time or on-call scheduling. Under this system, workers are required to be “on call” to come in and work on a particular day even if they’re not scheduled to do so.
The industry’s profit margins are tight, says Ostrega, and companies are looking to extract savings however they can. Software-based scheduling systems do the trick by linking labor supply to consumer demand. When store traffic is low, the system calls for fewer employees; when the system projects more patrons, it demands more workers. Employers like it because it keeps them from racking up unnecessary labor costs.
Now, unpredictable scheduling is increasingly drawing the interest of public authorities.
'The Pressure's Mounting'
In April, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent letters to major retailers that inquired about their on-call scheduling and asked whether their policies violated state law. Like seven other states and the District of Columbia, New York has so-called reporting-time laws that require employees to be paid when they report to work, even if no work is provided.
Since the letters went out, a number of high-profile companies have announced changes to their policies. The Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch, which both received the notices, said they would end the practice of on-call scheduling. And Starbucks promised last year to provide more consistent scheduling to baristas. But as a recent story in the New York Times revealed, the cafe chain has failed to do so.
Robert Hiltonsmith, senior policy analyst at Demos, a progressive think tank, expects the positive trends to continue -- even if Tuesday’s survey suggests employers overall aren’t relenting on tough and irregular scheduling demands. “I think it’s a slow burn, but the pressure’s mounting,” he says.
It’s in part a question of economic self-interest, Hiltonsmith says. Burned-out workers tend to quit their jobs fairly quickly, and high turnover is expensive. That’s one of the reasons why Walmart, the nation’s largest private-sector employer, and its top competitors voluntarily hiked wages earlier this year, according to Hiltonsmith. In fact, when Walmart announced it was boosting starting pay to at least $9 an hour, it also promised to notify workers of their schedules at least two and a half weeks in advance.
Reforms like this and others -- shifts that are scheduled the same time every week -- could prevent retailers from losing employees like Roy-Rankin, the kind of people who are otherwise content at work.
There’s also mounting political pressure, which stems from growing public concern over the livelihood of service-sector workers. Hiltonsmith attributes this to the “seismic shifts in the labor force” -- the decades-long decline of manufacturing and growth in service-sector employment.
Contrary to the popular image, retail workers are not teenagers looking to make a quick buck. The median age of a retail trade employee is 38, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“I think people had less concern when it wasn’t people trying to support their families,” Hiltonsmith says. “For better or worse, the service economy is the economy of the country’s future.”
Source: International Business Times
NY furioso con plan tributario aprobado por el Senado
Las principales autoridades y activistas de Nueva York rechazaron este sábado el plan tributario aprobado en la...
Las principales autoridades y activistas de Nueva York rechazaron este sábado el plan tributario aprobado en la madrugada por el Senado federal que deberá ser armonizado con el de la Cámara Baja antes de llegar al despacho del presidente Donald Trump.
“Los republicanos han votado por un plan que ni siquiera tuvieron tiempo de leer. Una vez más probaron que les importan más sus donantes de campaña que las familias trabajadoras”, indicó el alcalde Bill de Blasio en un comunicado tras agregar que esta votación significa un incremento de impuestos para 87 millones de familias.
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Kansas And Missouri Activists Gather On Troost To Stand For 'Moral Economy'
NPR - March 6, 2015, by Cody Newill - Community activists and faith leaders from Kansas and Missouri rallied at the...
NPR - March 6, 2015, by Cody Newill - Community activists and faith leaders from Kansas and Missouri rallied at the intersection of 63rd Street and Troost Avenue Thursday, calling for a "moral economy."
One issue that several speakers focused on was a recent comment by Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City president Esther George suggesting that interest rates may be increased to combat inflation.
Rev. Stan Runnels of St. Paul's Episcopal Church believes that raising interest rates now would hurt low-wage earners and undo economic progress that has been slowly mounting in the last several years.
"Right now, there is some opportunity for us to move in the direction of an improved economy," Runnels said. "We're concerned that if we begin dabbling with these other metrics, like worrying about inflation, we could scramble that up."
The rally was held outside a fast-food restaurant and payday loan lender, which organizer Andrew Kling with the group Communities Creating Opportunity says is symbolic of the economic troubles that face minorities.
"These are two of the greatest challenges that working people face in this economy: low wages and predatory industries that thrive on taking away the wealth and earnings of working people struggling to get through," Kling said. "We should not accept double-digit unemployment in the black community as normal."
The activists also called for an end to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' use of averaged unemployment rates, which they say ignores racial disparities. For example, Kansas City's unemployment rate as a whole sits around 5 percent, but the rate of black citizens without jobs is 12.6 percent.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its February employment statistics Friday, which showed the U.S. economy as a whole at 5.5 percent unemployment.
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Second Draft of Scaffold Report Released
Times Union - September 3, 2014, by Casey Seiler - SUNY's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government has released a...
Times Union - September 3, 2014, by Casey Seiler - SUNY's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government has released a second draft of its controversial report on New York's Scaffold Law. According to the Institute's Deputy Director for Operations Robert Bullock, it's the only remaining version of the report that was shared with the report's funder, the state Lawsuit Reform Alliance.
The business-backed group, which opposes Scaffold Law, paid $82,800 to fund the report — sponsorship that has led critics to attack the study as advocacy in the guise of research. Its authors, however, insist the research was conducted in good faith.
Scaffold Law, which places "absolute liability" on employers for gravity-related workplace injuries, is supported by labor unions but opposed by business groups that claim it needlessly drives up construction costs — a thesis backed up in part by the report. Opponents would like to see New York follow other states by adopting a "comparative negligence" standard that would make workers proportionately responsible when their actions contribute to an accident.
The Center for Popular Democracy, a labor-backed group that supports Scaffold Law, lambasted the report upon its release last winter and requested copies of all communications between the institute and the Lawsuit Reform Alliance. That FOIL request produced a series of emails between researchers and LRA Executive Director Tom Stebbins, including Stebbins' suggested edits to a June 25, 2013, draft copy of the report that was not initially released by the institute.
The center appealed to SUNY, which ultimately released the June 25 draft. A comparison of the draft and the final report suggested that some of Stebbins' suggestions were reflected in the final version. Researchers, however, said any changes were the result of their efforts to sharpen their analysis, and not made due to pressure from the funder.
The newly released draft, dated Aug. 7, 2013, closely resembles the final report.
The center's Josie Duffy claims the six-week gap between the first and second drafts suggests that the institute moved quickly to follow the alliance's edits.
"SUNY says it has now disclosed everything it has, but given that LRANY and the authors held weekly conference calls to discuss the report's progress, we may never know the full extent of their influence over the final version," she said.
In an email, Bullock said the institute "has been open and honest about its contacts with funders and its research has been and will continue to be immune from influence."
"It is unfortunate," he added, "that a research organization known throughout the nation for the quality and character of its work should have to defend itself from accusations leveled by the Center for Popular Democracy, an organization well known for its partisanship."
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Workers' next big fight: Fairer scheduling
The Fight for $15 is still being waged, but the movement is adding "Fight for a Fair Workweek" to its agenda. Americans...
The Fight for $15 is still being waged, but the movement is adding "Fight for a Fair Workweek" to its agenda.
Americans at the lowest rung of the wage ladder are looking forward to hourly pay hikes in cities and states including New York and California. Yet there's a troubling and escalating trend of underemployment and scheduling hurdles that make it next to impossible for many workers to get ahead, worker advocates say.
A defining feature of the post-recession recovery has been a surge in part-time workers. And despite an improving labor market, with unemployment at 5 percent, more than 6 million people in the U.S. who would rather work full-time remain stuck in part-time jobs.
California represents a large chunk of that underemployment, with more than 1 million working involuntary part-time jobs. In Silicon Valley, more than four out of every 10 hourly workers are now part-time, according to research due to be released Thursday.
The findings, based on data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and written by the Center for Popular Democracy and Working Partnerships USA, found insufficient and inconsistent hours leave hourly workers struggling in San Jose, where the minimum hourly rate currently stands at $10.30.
Of San Jose's total workforce, 47 percent, or an estimated 162,000, work hourly jobs, with 43 percent of those hourly workers employed part-time or on variable schedules as their main job, up from 26 percent a decade earlier, according to the report.
"Employers have restructured employment so that the work week is shrinking for low-wage workers," Carrie Gleason, director of the Center for Popular Democracy's Fair Workweek Initiative. "The minimum wage is finally catching up, and now we're going to see more and more policymakers pay attention to hours. They recognize $15 isn't enough if you're only working part-time."
What's occurring in San Jose helps relay "an important national story about a very prosperous region with a very low unemployment rate, yet one out of three workers isn't making it every month," said Derecka Mehrens, executive director at Working Partnerships USA. "From what we've seen, the wage fight cannot be separated from the hour fight."
Mehrens' group is gathering signatures to put an initiative on the November ballot that would require employers in San Jose offer more hours to existing qualified part-time workers before hiring new part-time or temporary workers.
Opponents to scheduling mandates include the National Restaurant Association, or NRA, which has lobbied against measures under consideration in state and local legislatures, as well as one proposed in Congress. The trade association says such measures have already caused "confusion" for restaurant owners in San Francisco and could result in fewer workers being hired.
Advocates for workers have a more sympathetic ear, if not a solution, at Starbucks (SBUX), which has drawn its share of negative attention for creating havoc with the lives of its baristas through its scheduling practices. At the company's annual meeting in Seattle last month, barista Darrion Sjoquist asked CEO Howard Schultz about addressing the scheduling issues that he and his colleagues routinely face.
"It's at the top of our list to create some balance between the pressure that exists on some people who are having a difficult time with the schedule and our ability to schedule thousands of people," said Schultz. "We understand the issues and we think they are critical," he said, adding that Starbucks believes a technological tool is needed to address the issues involved with scheduling 300,000 people around the world.
The scheduling issue last week had attorneys general from California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Rhode Island expanding a probe into the use of unpaid on-call shifts and other scheduling practices in the retail industry.
"On-call shifts are unfair to workers who must keep the day free, arrange for child care, and give up the chance to get another job or attend a class -- often all for nothing," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement. "On-call shifts are not a business necessity, as we see from the many retailers that no longer use this unjust method of scheduling work hours."
American Eagle Outfitters (AEO), Uniqlo, Aéropostale (ARO), Payless ShoeSource (PSS), Coach (COH), and the Disney Store (DIS) are among the 15 retailers sent letters asking about their use of on-call shifts, which can involve mandating workers to be available for work without a guaranteed shift. The practice is a potential violation of state reporting pay laws, which require employers give workers minimum pay when a shift is canceled or shortened.
Maryland, Minnesota and Illinois don't have reporting pay laws, but they've signed onto the letters to express concern about the impact of on-calling scheduling on workers and their families.
The inquiry follows a similar one by Schneiderman last year that resulted in six brands including the Gap (GPS), Victoria's Secret (LB) and Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) ending on-call scheduling, a move impacting a quarter million workers.
Scheduling protections were adopted last year in San Francisco and Santa Clara County, while conversely, Indiana and Alabama are among the states that have preemptively passed legislation prohibiting cities within their borders from enacting such measures.
In Seattle, which has passed paid sick-time standards and a higher minimum wage, the city council is considering legislation that would require companies offer workers more livable schedules.
By KATE GIBSON
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Women Have a Voice: Watch 2 Protestors Confront Senator Jeff Flake to Call for an FBI Investigation
Women Have a Voice: Watch 2 Protestors Confront Senator Jeff Flake to Call for an FBI Investigation
Before Senator Jeff Flake shocked the world by requesting an FBI investigation into sexual assault claims made by Dr....
Before Senator Jeff Flake shocked the world by requesting an FBI investigation into sexual assault claims made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Friday, the Arizona Republican was confronted in an elevator by two protestors who attempted to convince him to call for the probe. The scene was caught on video by people in the hallway, and may have ultimately tipped the scales in Flake’s determining whether to make his pitch to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Read the full article here.
Fed Up Statement: Market Turmoil Should Remind Fed that Economy Is Too Weak to Slow It Down
Shawn Sebastian, Policy Analyst at the Center for Popular Democracy, released the following statement on behalf of the...
Shawn Sebastian, Policy Analyst at the Center for Popular Democracy, released the following statement on behalf of the Fed Up campaign:
“The Fed Up campaign has been saying for more than a year that the economy is too weak to warrant interest rate hikes. Although the stock market was performing well and Wall Street was reaping major profits, the real economy has seen stagnant wages and insufficient job growth.
“The past week’s events vindicate our argument. The economy is too weak, and the performance of the stock market is not a legitimate basis for making interest rate decisions. Just as the market inflated itself over previous months, and witnessed a “correction” recently, it will likely continue to fluctuate in the months ahead. Fed officials who pointed to an inflated stock market as a justification to raise interest rates have been proven wrong: the health of the economy should be measured by the labor market, not the stock market, and the labor market is far from recovered.
“The Fed must continue focusing on the fundamentals: building a labor market that works for all communities, and that features rising wages and good jobs for everybody who wants to work. Creating genuine full employment is the Fed’s mandate, and the past few days vindicate the message that the Fed Up campaign’s worker leaders and economists have said all along: this economy is far too weak for the Fed to intentionally slow it down.”
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The Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda.
Elizabeth Warren to Help Propose Senate Bill to Tackle Part-Time Schedules
The Guardian - July 23, 2014, by Jana Kasperkevic - Part-time jobs are becoming the source of an employment...
The Guardian - July 23, 2014, by Jana Kasperkevic - Part-time jobs are becoming the source of an employment crisis in the US, as they take the place of full-time jobs for many Americans. That puts many employees at the mercy of erratic part-time schedules, in which they never know what their hours will be from one week to the next.
Congress is making the rare move of taking action on a major employment issue. Representatives George Miller and Rosa L DeLauro introduced a Schedules That Work Act on Tuesday.
There's another version of the bill brewing in the Senate. Senators Tom Harkin and Elizabeth Warren are the sponsors of the Senate’s version of the bill. Carrie Gleason, co-founder of Retail Action Project, said the Warren will introduce the Senate version in upcoming weeks.
“A single mom working two jobs should know if her hours are being canceled before she arranges for daycare and drives halfway across town to show up at work,” said Warren. “This is about some basic fairness in work scheduling so that both employees and employers have more certainty and can get the job done.”
According to the National Women’s Law Center’s summary of the Schedules That Work bill, it would have several goals: to provide employees with the right to request and receive a flexible, predictable or stable work schedule; ensure that employees who show up for a scheduled shift, only to be sent home, receive at least four hours’ worth of pay; and ensure that if employees’ schedule were to change, they are to be notified with a new schedule at two weeks before it goes into effect. It would also prevent employers from retaliating against employees who ask for schedule changes.
A week before the introduction of the legislation, Miller expressed scepticism over the likelihood of its passing the Republican-controlled House. According to the New York Times, the California lawmaker “acknowledges that his bill is unlikely to be enacted anytime soon – partly because of opposition from business”, but hopes that the bill will bring attention to these unfair scheduling practices. That alone says a lot about the current political climate within the US.
Part-time is the new full-time
The growing scale of part-time work suggests it merits closer regulation, or at least scrutiny. Earlier this month, when the US Department of Labor announced that US had added 288,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate dropped to 6.1%, many were quick to point out that one of the contributing factors was that part-time jobs were on the rise.
Currently, there are 7.5 million “involuntary part-time” workers in the US. These are workers who weren’t able to find a full-time job or whose hours have been cut back. In June alone, about 275,000 of such part-time jobs were created. Struggling to make ends meet, about 1.89m Americans are currently working two part-time jobs.
About 52% of retail workers and 40% of janitors and housekeepers know their schedule only a week or less in advance, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Retail Action Project found that about 20% of workers got their schedule just three days in advance.
Lack of stable, reliable schedules for part-time workers is "a growing national crisis in the American workplace", according to The Center for Popular Democracy. In addition to the weekly schedule changes, part-time workers are often victims of last-minute schedule changes as well.
“Workers need scheduling predictability so they can arrange for child care, pick up kids from school, or take an elderly parent to the doctor," said Miller.
Women and part-time work
"Like too many others, this is a problem that primarily affects women," DeLauro said when introducing the Schedules That Work Act with Miller.
Last-minute schedule changes are especially difficult on mothers with young children that cannot be left on their own. Out of 200 mothers with young children working in the hospitality industry, just 56% had a predictable work schedule, found ROC-United. For those 46% with un-predictable work-schedule, 39% had a schedule that changes weekly. The remaining 5% had a schedule that might change from day to day.
Four out of 10 mothers said last-minute changes affected their child-care needs. Some had to call in a back-up babysitter, like the mother above. Others, at 29%, had to pay a fine to their childcare provider, due to these schedule changes. Another 20% of mothers lost their child care provider because of their erratic schedule.
State laws go a little way
Since it might be a while yet before Congress takes up the issue, states can step up and take the lead on this issue. Seven states and District of Columbia already have a “reporting time pay” laws in place. Oregon has one as well, but it’s applicable only to minors, according to Retail Action Project.
Currently enacted state laws specifically protect workers who were scheduled for work, but were sent home upon arrival. For example, in New Hampshire, such workers must be paid at least two hours’ pay if this occurs. In other states like Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York, they have to be paid for at least three hours.
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Arrests, sit-ins, shouting — activists plan a week of nationwide protest to fight Graham-Cassidy
Arrests, sit-ins, shouting — activists plan a week of nationwide protest to fight Graham-Cassidy
Since early March, when the first Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was introduced in the...
Since early March, when the first Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was introduced in the House, activist groups have driven millions of phone calls and thousands of protesters to Washington.
To push for the bill’s defeat, they led numerous rallies on Capitol Hill, occupied Senate offices, shouted in the Capitol building — and even learned, if they made enough noise, senators could hear them outside the Capitol.
Read the full article here.
Arizona’s special election could send an important message for the midterms — even if the GOP wins
Arizona’s special election could send an important message for the midterms — even if the GOP wins
Ady Barkan, the man with ALS who became nationally famous for confronting Sen. Jeff Flake over his support for the...
Ady Barkan, the man with ALS who became nationally famous for confronting Sen. Jeff Flake over his support for the Republican tax bill has thrown his support behind Tipirneni, creating a viral web ad for her campaign.
Read the full article here.
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