Some Retailers Promote Decision to Remain Closed on Thanksgiving
New York Times - November 14, 2014, Steven Greenhouse - This...
New York Times - November 14, 2014, Steven Greenhouse - This Thanksgiving, the open-versus-shut debate has grown even louder.
Walmart, Kmart, Macy’s, Target, RadioShack and many other major retailers are proclaiming that they will be open on Thanksgiving Day to make shoppers happy. But Costco, Marshalls, GameStop and T. J. Maxx are riding the backlash against holiday commerce by boasting that they will not relent: They will remain closed that day to show that they are family-friendly and honoring the holiday.
But even as retailers vie for every dollar during a very competitive season, Tony Bartel, the president of GameStop, views this debate as open-and-shut. “For us, it’s a matter of principle,” said Mr. Bartel, whose company has 4,600 stores nationwide. “We have a phrase around here that we use a lot — it’s called ‘protecting the family.’ We want our associates to enjoy their complete holidays.”
“It’s an important holiday in the U.S., and our employees work hard during the holiday season, and we believe they deserve the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving Day with their family and friends,” said Richard A. Galanti, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Costco Wholesale, the nation’s second-largest retailer after Walmart. “We’ve never opened on Thanksgiving, and when the trend to do so occurred in the last couple or three years, we chose not to because we thought it was the right thing to do for our employees.”
More than two dozen major retail chains plan to stay dark on Thanksgiving, including Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, the Burlington Coat Factory, Crate and Barrel, Dillard’s, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Patagonia.
Johan Araujo, a senior game adviser at GameStop’s flagship store in Herald Square in Manhattan, applauded his company’s decision. “It’s good to know they’re thinking about us and what we want,” he said. His plans involve cooking the turkey for his fiancée and friends this year.
Sidney Bartlett, the manager of Mr. Araujo’s store, said that when the store used to be open on Thanksgiving — it started closing for the holiday last year — it was painful to figure out which employees to inconvenience and schedule to work that day. “I thought it’s great the C.E.O. decided to close for the holiday,” he said.
He said it saddened him to see so many stores open that day. “We’ve shifted as a nation — it’s not so much about the family, it’s all about business,” said Mr. Bartlett, who is studying for an M.B.A. at Columbia.
“We don’t believe we will lose any ground to competitors,” said Mr. Bartel, the company’s president. “Even if we lose some ground to competitors, we are making it corporate principle — we have committed to associates that we will not open on Thanksgiving.”
Pushed by competitive forces, some malls are opening on Thanksgiving Day for the first time. In Paramus, N.J., Westfield Garden State Plaza and Paramus Park will open from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., prodded by Macy’s decision to open its stores in those malls.
Walden Galleria, a mall with over 200 stores near Buffalo, threatened to fine retailers about $200 an hour if they don’t open at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.
Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative, a campaign pushing retailers to adopt schedules that are more friendly to workers, said, “What’s different from years past is there are more and more retailers coming out publicly and saying, ‘We’re staying closed on Thanksgiving.’ ” They want to demonstrate to their customer base that they’re family-friendly.”
More than 55,000 people have signed a petition on change.org urging Target to remain closed on Thanksgiving, while the Boycott Black Thursday Facebook page has more than 87,000 likes.
Walmart officials say they are doing consumers a favor by opening on Thanksgiving. To reduce the long lines that have upset many shoppers on Black Friday, Walmart announced on Tuesday that it would spread Black Friday over five days.
“It became Black Friday, then it became Thursday, and now it’s becoming weeklong,” said Duncan Mac Naughton, chief merchandising officer at Walmart. “Maybe it’s going to be November.”
Deisha Barnett, a Walmart spokeswoman, said many shoppers were happy that the company would be open on Thanksgiving. “We’re in the service industry, and we’re just like airports and grocery stores and gas stations that are open on Thanksgiving so they can provide what customers need,” she said. “We’ve been open on Thanksgiving for 20-something years.”
Walmart will again face a wave of protests this holiday season. Our Walmart, a union-backed group of Walmart workers pushing for higher pay, said on Friday that it would hold protests at 1,600 Walmarts on Black Friday.
After keeping almost all its stores closed last Thanksgiving, the financially troubled RadioShack said that it planned to open its stores from 8 a.m. to midnight this Thanksgiving. But after some employees voiced dismay, the company changed course to give them time for their feast. Its stores will open from 8 a.m. to noon, close for five hours and reopen from 5 p.m. until midnight, and again at 6 a.m. on Friday.
The University of Connecticut Poll conducted a survey last November that found that nine out of 10 Americans said they didn’t plan to spend Thanksgiving hunting for bargains, while 7 percent said they planned to visit stores on Thanksgiving Day.
The poll of 1,189 adults, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percent, found that 49 percent disapproved of stores opening on Thanksgiving Day, with 16 percent approving and 34 percent neutral.
Last Thanksgiving, J. C. Penney, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Sears and Target all opened at 8 p.m. This year, Kmart plans to open at 6 a.m. and remain open for the next 42 hours.
“All these companies were closed for decades,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “What’s changed is that some have chosen to remain open, and those companies should be getting demerits. People should ask, ‘Is this the sort of society we want to live in that people aren’t even given the option of celebrating holidays?’ ”
He said that if stores decided to open on Thanksgiving, working that day should be voluntary, not mandatory. He said many part-time workers were eager to work on Thanksgiving.
Mr. Appelbaum praised the Macy’s store in Herald Square for using only workers who volunteer to work that day
Macy’s plans to open at 6 p.m. this Thanksgiving, two hours earlier than last Thanksgiving — and Sears is doing the same thing. “Customer response to the 8 p.m. opening last year was exceptionally strong,” said Jim Sluzewski, Macy’s senior vice president for communications. “At Macy’s Herald Square store, we had 15,000 customers waiting outside when the doors opened. The experience was similar across the country. Many customers asked why we couldn’t open a little earlier.”
In contrast, he said Bloomingdale’s, a Macy’s subsidiary, would remain closed on Thanksgiving Day, saying it was “less promotional” than Macy’s.
Roger Beahm, executive director of the Center for Retail Innovation at Wake Forest University, said it was smart competitively for retailers to open on Thanksgiving. “Did the folks who questioned the sanctity of Thanksgiving learn a lesson?” he said. “A good start to the holiday retail season can really make your year, and a late start can really cripple retailers.”
Dan Evans, a spokesman for Nordstrom, said his company kept its stores closed on Thanksgiving, with a few employees completing holiday decorations that day, before they are unveiled on Black Friday.
“If our customers really wanted us to open on Thanksgiving, that’s what we’ll do,” Mr. Evans said. “We used to be closed on the Fourth of July. We used to be closed on New Year’s Day, but customers wanted us to be open on those days, so now we’re open on those days. Our customers guide us. We don’t guide them.”
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Fed district that includes Charlotte announces new president
Fed district that includes Charlotte announces new president
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, which monitors large banks in a district that includes Charlotte, announced a new...
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, which monitors large banks in a district that includes Charlotte, announced a new president on Monday.
Thomas Barkin, chief risk officer for consulting firm McKinsey & Company, assumes the Fed role Jan. 1. He replaces Jeffrey Lacker, who abruptly retired this year after acknowledging he had improperly discussed sensitive information involving Fed policy with an analyst.
Read the full article here.
How Walmart Persuades Its Workers Not to Unionize
One former Walmart store manager tells the story that after discovering a pro-union flyer in his store’s men’s room,...
One former Walmart store manager tells the story that after discovering a pro-union flyer in his store’s men’s room, he informed company headquarters and within 24 hours, an anti-union SWAT team flew to his store in a corporate jet. And when the meat department of a Walmart store in Texas became the retailer’s only operation in the United States to unionize, back in 2000, Walmart announced plans two weeks later to use prepackaged meat and eliminate butchers at that store and 179 others.
With 1.3 million U.S. employees—more than the population of Vermont and Wyoming combined—Walmart is by far the nation’s largest private-sector employer. It’s also one of the nation’s most aggressive anti-union companies, with a long history of trying to squelch unionization efforts. “People are scared to vote for a union because they’re scared their store will be closed,” said Barbara Gertz, an overnight Walmart stocker in Denver.
Walmart maintains a steady drumbeat of anti-union information at its more than 4,000 U.S. stores, requiring new hires—there are hundreds of thousands each year—to watch a video that derides organized labor. Indeed, Walmart’s anti-union campaign goes back decades: There was “Labor Relations and You at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center,” a 1991 guide aimed at beating back the Teamsters at its warehouses, and then in 1997 came “A Manager’s Toolbox to Remaining Union Free.” The first half of a statement in that toolbox has been repeatedly snickered at for being so egregiously false: “We are not anti-union; we are pro-associate.”
Early last year, Anonymous, a network of hacker activists, leaked two internal Walmart PowerPoint slideshows. One was a “Labor Relations Training” presentation for store managers that echoed the “Manager’s Toolbox” in suggesting that unions were money-grubbing outfits caring little about workers’ welfare. “Unions are a business, not a club or social organization—they want associates’ money,” the PowerPoint read. (Walmart confirmed the PowerPoints’ authenticity.) “Unions spend members’ dues money on things other than representing them,” it added.
Walmart is perfectly within its rights to communicate its stance to employees. While employers are legally barred from threatening store closures, layoffs, or loss of benefits because of unionization, they are free to tell workers why they oppose unions.
Walmart has battled for years against the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents employees at many grocery stores and retailers, and its offshoot, OUR Walmart, an association of Walmart employees. Walmart insists that the UFCW is out to damage Walmart’s business. The second PowerPoint that Anonymous leaked last year attacked OUR Walmart, asking, “Is OUR Walmart/UFCW here to help you? Answer: NO.”
Tensions have risen between the retailer and OUR Walmart in recent years, with the labor group organizing nationwide protests outside hundreds of stores each Black Friday. The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint in January of last year, accusing Walmart of illegally firing 19 OUR Walmart members and illegally disciplining more than 40 others after strikes and protests demanding higher pay. Walmart maintains that the firings and disciplining were legal and not in retaliation for protesting.
Getting a glimpse of Walmart’s internal PowerPoints and training manuals is rare, but one of Walmart’s orientation videos was leaked recently, and it again revealed Walmart’s anti-union efforts. Labor experts and Walmart employees say they were surprised at the blatant untruths in many of the video’s pro-company and anti-union statements.
Walmart confirmed the video’s authenticity and said the company showed it to new hires from 2009 through last year. Early on in the course of the video’s nine minutes, an actor dressed as a Walmart employee says, “You’re just beginning your career with us. It’s hard to grasp everything that’s available to you, like great benefits.”
Ken Jacobs, the chairman of the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center, suggested that this was essentially propaganda. “Walmart's benefits are well below the standard for union groceries,” he said. “They are not ‘great benefits’ by any standard.” A discounter like Walmart certainly doesn’t have the generous pensions or Cadillac health plans offered by some companies. Gertz, the overnight stocker in Denver, says her health plan is so stingy that she often doesn’t see a doctor when she’s sick because the deductible requires her to pay the first few thousand dollars out of pocket. Gertz said that when workers call in sick, their first day off comes out of their vacation days or personal days, not their paid sick days.
A spokesperson for Walmart says it will soon revamp its policy so that employees can use paid sick days starting on their first day out. The spokesperson added that its bonuses, 401(k) plan, and health plan are considerably better than at most other discounters—its 401(k) plan gives a dollar-for-dollar match for the first six percent of pay and the premium for its most popular health plan is just $21.90 every two weeks. That said, part-time workers, who represent nearly half its work force, don’t qualify for many of these benefits.
The leaked video also boasts, “There’s no retail company that offers more advancement and job security than Walmart.” Considering that some retailers are unionized with strong job-security provisions in their union contracts, some labor advocates wondered how Walmart could begin to assert that its job security is as strong as any other retailer’s.
“That’s patently false,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a division of the UFCW. “At Walmart you can be fired for any reason at all or no reason.” He contrasted Walmart, one of the nation’s many “at-will” employers, with retailers that are unionized or partly unionized, including Costco, Macy’s, H&M and Modell’s. At unionized stores, workers can only be fired “for cause,” meaning managers need a strong reason to fire someone—for example, stealing from a store or arriving 30 minutes late five days in a row. Moreover, workers in those unionized stores can usually challenge their dismissal by bringing in an impartial arbitrator who helps determine whether a firing was justified.
Walmart, in its orientation video, makes other attempts at belittling unions. It features an actor who says, “I was a union member at my last job. Everyone actually had to join the union . . . The thing I remember most about the union is that they took dues money out of my paycheck before I ever saw it, just like taxes.” The character’s assertion that he “had to join the union” diverges from the truth. The Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that workers cannot be required to join the union at a unionized workplace—although they can be required to pay union dues or fees (unless they live in one of the 25 states with “right to work” laws).
In the video, an actress standing in front of a rack of produce continues to hammer the message. “I always thought that unions were kind of like clubs or charities that were out to help workers,” she says. “Well, I found out that wasn’t exactly the case. The truth is unions are businesses, multimillion-dollar businesses that make their money by convincing people like you and me to give them a part of our paychecks.”
Although some union leaders have generous salaries, Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard, said that unions aren’t for-profit businesses. “If unions are businesses, they’re the best example of the sharing economy we’ve seen,” Sachs said. “Here’s the business model: By sharing their resources, including their financial resources, workers make better lives for themselves and their families.” Thomas Kochan, an MIT professor of management, said that the phrase the actor uses—“clubs and charities”—“insults any new hire’s intelligence.” “Most people know what unions are and what they try to do,” Kochan said.
Indeed, one might ask, if unions are doing as little for workers as Walmart maintains, why then does Walmart bother to battle unions so aggressively? Walmart takes a far more jaundiced view of unions than do many Americans—for instance the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops. “The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions,” the bishops once wrote in a pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All. And Pope John Paul II, never known as a raging liberal, called unions, “an indispensable element of social life.”
Brian Nick, a Walmart spokesman, explained why the company made the video. “The core reason to have the training and information on video, in and of itself, is we know that third-party groups often reach out to our associates,” he said. “This is an opportunity for us to provide accurate information that gives our associates knowledge about their work environment and their own rights as associates.”
In boasting about Walmart, the video says, “Walmart jobs are flexible jobs, giving associates the opportunity to balance our personal life with our worklife.” But Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group, strongly disagreed. “I’ve spoken with countless Walmart associates who talk about how erratic their work schedules are, about how managers regularly disregard their requests for basic accommodations so they can go to school or take care of their families,” she said. Some Walmart workers say their stores slashed their hours when they asked managers to accommodate their college schedule or their efforts to hold a second job to make ends meet.
Brian Nick, the Walmart spokesman, said the company was improving its scheduling practices. Beginning next year, it will offer some employees fixed schedules each week—many employees complain that their work schedules change vastly week-to-week.
In urging workers to shun unions, the Walmart video says, “In recent years, union organizers have spent a lot of time, effort and money trying to convince Walmart associates to join a union, all without any success.” But that’s not quite true. The UFCW hasn’t sought to persuade Walmart employees to join a union in recent years, although it did help form OUR Walmart to push for better wages and working conditions. OUR Walmart claimed a victory in February when Walmart announced it would raise its base pay to $9 this year and $10 next year. A spokesperson for Walmart said it was responding to a tighter labor market and boasted that the move would mean raises for 500,000 workers.
The Walmart video is correct about at least one thing: Most of the recent unionization votes at Walmart stores in the U.S. were unsuccessful. For example, the tire and lube workers at two Walmart stores, in Colorado and Pennsylvania, voted overwhelmingly in 2005 against unionizing. But the UFCW had a big success in 2004, when it unionized a Walmart in Jonquiere, Quebec—a first in North America. Walmart closed that store shortly afterward, and Canada’s Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the shutdown was an illegal ploy to avoid having a union. Walmart has long argued that it closed the Jonquiere store because it was unprofitable and that the closing had nothing to do with the union. As for Walmart’s decision to suddenly begin using prepackaged meat after that meat department in Texas unionized in 2000, the company said that the timing was just a coincidence and that the decision had nothing to do with unionization.
This past April, Walmart abruptly announced it was closing its store in Pico Rivera, California, along with four other stores, for six months. Many workers saw that as a daunting anti-union statement—the Pico Rivera store has the nation’s most militant OUR Walmart chapter, having staged a sit-in and numerous other protests. Walmart, however, insisted that the closing was necessitated by “ongoing plumbing issues.”
Source: The Atlantic
Nan Goldin, Activists Bring Sackler Protest to Harvard Art Museums
Nan Goldin, Activists Bring Sackler Protest to Harvard Art Museums
“Protestors threw pill bottles on the floor of the atrium, handed out pamphlets, and held banners and posters with...
“Protestors threw pill bottles on the floor of the atrium, handed out pamphlets, and held banners and posters with phrases like “MEDICAL STUDENTS AGAINST THE SACKLERS,” and “HARM REDUCTION NOW/TREATMENT NOW.” A number of speakers gave speeches about the Sacklers and the opioid crisis in the atrium, including Jennifer Flynn Walker of the Center for Popular Democracy and Goldin, who began organizing against Purdue and the Sacklers, who are major donors to cultural institutions throughout the United States and Europe, following treatment for opioid addiction last year. She said she became addicted after being prescribed OxyContin in 2014 following wrist surgery.
Read the full article here.
JPMorgan boss: 'Trump is our pilot' even when we disagree
JPMorgan boss: 'Trump is our pilot' even when we disagree
Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and one of the few big-bank bosses to keep his...
Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and one of the few big-bank bosses to keep his job after the Great Recession, will keep advising President Trump even when they might disagree, Dimon told shareholders at the company's annual meeting at its Delaware Technology Center north of Wilmington.
"Trump is the pilot flying our airplane," and as "a patriot" Dimon will continue to serve on a Presidential advisory panel, even though he may not "agree with all his policies," he said during a shareholder question-and-answer session.
Read full article here.
Yellen Says Improving Economy Still Faces Challenges
The Washington Post - August 22, 2014, by Ylan Q. Mui - Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen on Friday expressed...
The Washington Post - August 22, 2014, by Ylan Q. Mui - Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen on Friday expressed growing confidence that America’s market is improving but uncertainty over how much further it has to go.
Yellen began her remarks before a select group of elite economists and central bankers here by enumerating the unequivocal progress made since the Great Recession ended: Job growth has averaged 230,000 a month this year, and the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.2 percent after peaking in the double digits during the depths of the crisis.
But she quickly transitioned to the challenges in determining how close the labor market is to being fully healed — and how much the nation’s central bank should do to speed its convalescence. Although Yellen has consistently emphasized that the recovery is incomplete, her speech Friday focused on the difficulty of making a current diagnosis.
“Our understanding of labor market developments and their potential implications for inflation will remain far from perfect,” Yellen said at the annual conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. “As a consequence, monetary policy must be conducted in a pragmatic manner.”
The Fed slashed its target for short-term interest rates to zero and pumped trillions of dollars into the economy in the aftermath of the recession. More than five years later, it is finally scaling back that support. The Fed is slated to end its bond-buying program in October and is debating when to raise interest rates.
That decision carries enormous consequences: Move too soon, and the Fed risks undermining the economic progress made so far. Move too late, and it could risk stoking inflation in the future and sowing the seeds of the next financial crisis.
Investors generally expect the Fed to raise rates in the middle of next year, but several central bank officials gathered here cautioned that the moment could come earlier if the recovery improves more rapidly than expected. Yellen gave no clear timeline Friday but called for a “more nuanced” reading of the labor market as the economy returns to normal.
For example, the size of the nation’s workforce unexpectedly declined after the recession, the result of both demographic factors and unemployed workers who gave up hope of finding a job. Yellen reiterated Friday that a stronger economy could help stem that drop and suggested it may already be working. She also said that the run-up in involuntary part-time work and the low level of people choosing to quit their jobs could be reversed as the labor market improves.
But Yellen seemed to shift her stance on the country’s stagnant wage growth. Previously, she has cited it as a sign that the labor market remains weak. But on Friday she called on research that suggests wage growth has been subdued because employers were unable to cut salaries deeply enough during the recession, a phenomenon dubbed “pent-up wage deflation.” She also suggested that globalization and the difficulty that the long-term unemployed face in finding jobs could also be depressing wage growth.
The uncertainty facing the Fed means it will be carefully evaluating economic data over the coming months, Yellen said. And she said the central bank will remain nimble in its response.
“There is no simple recipe for appropriate policy in this context, and the [Fed] is particularly attentive to the need to clearly describe the policy framework we are using to meet these challenges,” she said.
Central bankers were not the only ones gathered in the Grand Tetons this year. Several workers and activists also traveled to Jackson Hole and called on the central bank to be cautious in removing its support for the economy, the first protest at the conference in recent memory.
The grass-roots group, organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, also issued an open letter to the Fed earlier in the week signed by more than 60 activist organizations. Kansas City Fed President Esther L. George — one of the most vocal proponents of raising interest rates soon — met with the protesters in Jackson Hole on Thursday for about two hours to hear their stories. Ady Barkan, senior attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy, said the groups plan to request meetings with other Fed officials as well.
Source
One ex-banker's built-in advantage in the Fed chair race: Family ties to Trump
One ex-banker's built-in advantage in the Fed chair race: Family ties to Trump
With Gary Cohn’s chances of becoming chairman of the Federal Reserve diminished, another former banker is waiting in...
With Gary Cohn’s chances of becoming chairman of the Federal Reserve diminished, another former banker is waiting in the wings for the coveted post: Kevin Warsh.
A veteran of both the central bank and Wall Street, Warsh is already high on the White House’s list of possible successors to Fed Chair Janet Yellen. But he has an enviable reference: his billionaire father-in-law, who met Donald Trump in college and is a confidant to this day.
Read the full article here.
Blacks Nearly Four Times More Likely Than Whites to Be Unemployed in Minnesota
Minneapolis City Pages - March 6, 2015, by Ben Johnson - A new study reaffirms a refrain equality advocates have become...
Minneapolis City Pages - March 6, 2015, by Ben Johnson - A new study reaffirms a refrain equality advocates have become quite fond of in this state: Minnesota is a great place to live -- for white people.
The Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute released a study yesterday showing the statewide unemployment rate for black people is 11.7 percent, compared to 3.2 percent for white people.
Black Minnesotans' unemployment rate is 3.7 times higher than white Minnesotans'. The study analyzed all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and the only places with a larger gap were Wisconsin (4.6 times higher) and D.C. (5.6 times higher).
Minneapolis unemployment rates are lower than statewide, but the racial gap (3.9x) is even higher.
When these figures came out yesterday protesters from across the country lobbied the Federal Reserve to keep its interest rates low.
When interest rates are low it's easier for businesses to borrow money, and in theory, easier access to money means businesses can hire -- and pay -- more people. On the flip side, if interest rates are kept too low for too long inflation becomes a concern.
"Unemployment is slowly, slowly heading in the right direction, but raising interest rates at this point would really set minorities back," said Becky Dernbach with Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, which held a rally yesterday at its headquarters. "We think the Fed needs to pay special consideration to how the recovery has not hit certain communities at all."
NOC and its allies are supportive of Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, who favors keeping interest rates low, but he's stepping down in a year. Protesters made it clear yesterday they want a say in who takes his place.
"On a fundamental level, we need to have a voice in the process," said Dernbach.
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A Push to Give Steadier Shifts to Part-Timers
New York Times - July 15, 2014, by Steve Greenhouse - As more workers find their lives upended and their paychecks...
New York Times - July 15, 2014, by Steve Greenhouse - As more workers find their lives upended and their paychecks reduced by ever-changing, on-call schedules, government officials are trying to put limits on the harshest of those scheduling practices.
The actions reflect a growing national movement — fueled by women’s and labor groups — to curb practices that affect millions of families, like assigning just one or two days of work a week or requiring employees to work unpredictable hours that wreak havoc with everyday routines like college and child care.
The recent, rapid spread of on-call employment to retail and other sectors has prompted proposals that would require companies to pay employees extra for on-call work and to give two weeks’ notice of a work schedule.
Vermont and San Francisco have adopted laws giving workers the right to request flexible or predictable schedules to make it easier to take care of children or aging parents. Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller, is pressing the City Council to take up such legislation. And last month, President Obama ordered federal agencies to give the “right to request” to two million federal workers.
The new laws and proposals generally require an employer to discuss a new employee’s situation and to consider scheduling requests, but they do not require companies to accommodate individual schedules. Many businesses have opposed these measures, arguing that they represent improper government intrusion into private operations.
In a referendum last year, voters in SeaTac, Wash. — the community near Seattle that also passed the nation’s highest minimum wage, $15 an hour for some workers — approved a measure that bars employers from hiring additional part-time workers if any of their existing part-timers want more hours. The move was a response to complaints from workers that they were not scheduled for enough hours to support their families. Some San Francisco lawmakers are seeking to enact a similar regulation.
Representative George Miller of California, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, plans to introduce legislation this summer that would require companies to pay their employees for an extra hour if they were summoned to work with less than 24 hours’ notice. He is also proposing a guarantee of four hours’ pay on days when employees are sent home after just a few hours — something that happens in many restaurants and retailers when customer traffic is slow.
That happened to Mary Coleman. After an hourlong bus commute, she arrived at her job at a Popeyes in Milwaukee only to have her boss order her to go home without clocking in — even though she was scheduled to work. She was not paid for the day.
“It’s becoming more and more common to put employees in a very uncertain and tenuous position with respect to their schedules, and that ricochets if workers have families or other commitments,” Mr. Miller said. “The employer community always says it abhors uncertainty and unpredictability, but they are creating an employment situation that has huge uncertainty and unpredictability for millions of Americans.”
While Mr. Miller acknowledges that his bill is unlikely to be enacted anytime soon — partly because of opposition from business (and a Republican-controlled House), he said the bill would bring attention to what he called often callous scheduling practices. His bill, similar to one in the Senate sponsored by Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, has a “right to request” provision that would bar employers from denying requests from workers with caregiving or school-related conflicts unless they had a “bona fide” business reason.
Corporate groups protest that such measures undercut efficiency and profits. “The hyper-regulation of the workplace by government isn’t conducive to a positive business climate,” said Scott DeFife, an executive vice president of the National Restaurant Association. “The more complications that government creates for operating a business, the less likely we’ll see a positive business environment that’s good for the economy and increasing jobs.”
Mr. DeFife pointed out that the daily ebb and flow of customers necessitated flexibility in scheduling.
David French, a senior vice president of the National Retail Federation, said many people chose careers in retail because of the flexible work hours.
“These proposals may sound reasonable, but if you unpack them, they could be very harmful,” Mr. French said. “Where employers and employees now work together to solve scheduling problems, you’ll have a very bureaucratic environment where rigid rules would be introduced.”
While many of these workers are not unionized, the labor movement has often battled against part-time work and ever-changing schedules. But as unions have grown weaker, employers have felt freer to employ part-timers and use more volatile scheduling. Unions still push for workers to get more hours — and those pressures are one reason Macy’s and Walmart have adopted programs letting employees claim additional, available shifts by going onto their employers’ websites.
In a climate where many retailers, restaurants and other businesses are still struggling after the recession, economists point to the increased uncertainty faced by employees. About 27.4 million Americans work part time. The number of those part-timers who would prefer to work full time has nearly doubled since 2007, to 7.5 million. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 47 percent of part-time hourly workers ages 26 to 32 receive a week or less of advance notice for their schedule.
In a study of the data, two University of Chicago professors found that employers dictated the work schedules for about half of young adults, without their input. For part-time workers, schedules on average fluctuated from 17 to 28 hours a week.
“Frontline managers face pressure to keep costs down, but they really don’t have much control over wages or benefits,” said Susan J. Lambert, a University of Chicago professor who interpreted the data. “What they have control over is employee hours.”
Ms. Lambert said flexible, not rigid or unpredictable, hours would become as important an issue as paid family leave. “The issue of scheduling is going to be the next big effort on improving labor standards,” she said. “To reduce unpredictability is important to keep women engaged in the labor force.”
David Chiu, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, has created a business-labor group that is trying to find the middle ground.
“We’ve learned that predictability in hours is important not just to help workers juggle their lives, but for economic security — to help workers take a second job to live in expensive cities like San Francisco or New York,” Mr. Chiu said. “We’re confident that we can move forward with policies that work for workers as well as business’s bottom line.”
Sharlene Santos says her part-time schedule at a Zara clothing store in Manhattan — ranging from 16 to 24 hours a week — is not enough. “Making $220 a week, that’s not enough to live on — it’s not realistic,” she said.
After Ms. Santos and four other Zara workers recently wrote to the company, protesting that they were given too few hours and received just two days’ notice for their schedule, the company promised to start giving them two weeks’ advance notice.
Fatimah Muhammad said that at the Joe Fresh clothing store where she works in Manhattan, some weeks she was scheduled to work just one day but was on call for four days — meaning she had to call the store each morning to see whether it needed her to work that day.
“I felt kind of stuck. I couldn’t make plans,” said Ms. Muhammad, who said she was now assigned 25 hours a week.
A national campaign — the Fair Workweek Initiative — is pushing for legislation to restrict these practices in places including Milwaukee, New York and Santa Clara, Calif. The effort includes the National Women’s Law Center, the United Food and Commercial Workers union and the Retail Action Project, a New York workers’ group.
“Too many workers are working either too many or too few hours in an economy that expects us to be available 24/7,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative and an organizer at the Center for Popular Democracy, a national advocacy group. “It’s gotten to the point where workers, especially women workers, are saying, ‘We need a voice in how much and when we work.' ”
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Ady Barkan launches new campaign asking everyone to “Be A Hero”
Ady Barkan launches new campaign asking everyone to “Be A Hero”
Activist Ady Barkan, who is fighting ALS, is starting a new fight - to get people to vote. He’s asking people to “Be A...
Activist Ady Barkan, who is fighting ALS, is starting a new fight - to get people to vote. He’s asking people to “Be A Hero” and vote for candidates who protect healthcare. Ady tells Ali Velshi that with all the challenges he faces that if he can get out and vote, everyone can.
Watch the video here.
1 month ago
1 month ago