Retailers often schedule workers last-minute, sometimes requiring workers to call in shortly before their scheduled shift to see if they are needed. Should the manner in which work is scheduled be regulated by the government, and to what degree?
Two articles describe the phenomenon. I apologize for any paywalls.
I am unfamiliar with existing regulations. It appears that they are typically at the state level.
My default position for most exchanges of goods/services/money is to allow willing parties to negotiate with minimal interference. People with inherently flexible lives would lose a bargaining chip if they are not allowed to use it. That said, I’m not convinced that’s really a problem. We don’t allow people to work for free. And while being on call is perhaps not work, it certainly keeps people from working elsewhere. I’m a big fan of people working, working hard, and working a lot. You can pull in a decent pile of cash on minimum wage if you can get enough hours, but that may require being able to hold down two jobs.
Unpredictable work schedules make working two jobs difficult, if not impossible. They also may make some jobs unprofitable. Gas and childcare can make a job a net loss, depending on schedule. This may complicate government aid programs that require employment.
From the employers’ view, worker flexibility likely increases profitability. I’ve never run a retail store. Perhaps customer and operational demands are complete chaos.
I’ve covered all the points that I can think of at the moment. To the question I ask at the start of the OP: I don’t know. I think I would be comfortable with some sort of government interference in this case, acknowledging that it would likely have some negative effect on business. However, I’m not sure how it should manifest.
The way it has traditionally worked in Australia, IME, is that if you have very low hours or a flexible schedule, then you’re a casual, and get paid a higher hourly rate than a part-timer or full-timer.
It’s possible that this may be being eroded here too - it’s been a while since I last worked in a shop. But I think that’s the way to go. Some people may in fact be perfectly willing to have flexible schedules, especially in exchange for more money. But it is at least a minor imposition on anybody, and a major one on some.
I think the practice should be subject to legislation, like other labour-force conditions, and the legislation should be written so that:
Pre-scheduled hours (say, those scheduled a week in advance) are paid at the standard rate for the job
Last-minute hours can be offered to any employee, but must be paid at time-and-a-half (50% more)
No employer may penalise an employee for refusing any offered shift, unless it’s one which was agreed to at the start of the employment.
That would seem to allow employers flexibility, while still keeping the needs of staff protected. And it makes them share the benefits of that flexibility, which I think is important.
If you don’t like it, work somewhere else. Just-in-time scheduling results in lower prices for consumer goods, which most benefits low-income people (that is, the people liberals pretend to help).
How I think it should work:
Schedule should be given out 7 days ahead of time. Businesses should be allowed to cancel a shift with 24 hours notice. Employees that do not receive sufficient notice must be paid for a minimum of three hours if they show up for a scheduled shift. Employees can volunteer to cancel a shift if the employer asks.
With Home Depot weather had a huge impact on sales, thus needed staffing. If it was raining or snowing you could count on sales being in the toilet. On a rainy day we’d start calling all associates and offering them the day off in order of seniority per department till we got down to a skeleton crew. If we didn’t get the staffing low enough through that method part timers arriving would be sent home after 3 hours.(in MA you are required to pay for a minimum three hours to someone coming to work) If someone said they wanted to work or didn’t want to work there was no ramifications.
Management was rarely given the option of taking the day off so the ratio of supervisors to associates was much higher than normal, with few customers in the store it meant the associates who came in to work would have to work much harder than they normally would doing non-sales activities so there was some incentive to take the day off. Usually we had no issues cutting staffing on a volunteer basis. The people who did show up clearly needed the money and they earned it.
When I was in retail at the supervisor level the operations manager could not manage the supervisor schedule to save his life. Often there was conflict because he’d change posted shifts without bothering to tell anyone.
How my life worked for some time: Single male meant I got stuck with all the shitty shifts and was the first to have my schedule moved because ‘I had no outside obligations’ I’d ee scheduled with Tuesday and Wednesday off. Get a call on Wednesday asking why I wasn’t at work. Turns out the schedule was changed on Tuesday. I’d then end up arguing with operations manager,
Me “if you are going to change my schedule you need to tell me.”
him “I did, I posted the new schedule on Tuesday, you need to check the schedule for changes each day”
Me “I’m not coming in on my day off to check my schedule”
Him “If you don’t show up for your assigned schedule you will be written up, it is your responsibility to check the schedule daily”
Me “If you feel you need to write me up for circumstances caused by your inability to schedule staff appropriately go ahead right ahead. I make a copy of each schedule, you can explain to your boss why the one at the start of the week and the one at the end of the week never match”
This conversation occurred every few months until he was transferred. I never did receive a write up.
Yeah we got a good glimpse of how beneficial low prices goods were to the poor during the laissez faire period of factory work and robber barons. 16 hour work days 7 days and week affordable goods at the company store! If they didn’t like it they could find another equally shitty job…
I know someone who has to put up with this shit. They get the next week’s schedule the day before that weeks work schedule starts (on a Friday afternoon). So, of course their whole weekend is up in the air till the last minute. Every fucking weekend.
Now, this is a big name retailer, not some disaster response company.
With the same base of available employees, in a national retail chain, just how fucking variable can the required labor be to run the store be that it needs to scheduled at the LAST MINUTE?
And of course, they are NOT quite full time. Gawd help them if they tried hold a second job with same sort of assholes who schedule their primary job.
That logic can be used as an argument against any workplace regulation. Are you against all workplace legislation, period? If so, fine; if not, do you have anything better than this drivel?
When I worked retail, I didn’t mind the schedule changes. But I did mind not knowing week to week if I would work 50 hours or 5. Two of those 5 hour weeks in a month, and suddenly I can’t pay rent.
I don’t think it’s too much to require employers in a normal retail setting to agree a minimal number of work hours that a given employee can expect in a pay period, and I’m sure it is better for the economy because it allows people to plan their finances. You can’t can’t make good financial decisions if you don’t have any clue how much your next paycheck will be.
My theory was companies did this to make sure their employees weren’t too attached to the job, so that we would just leave when they required us to do illegal things (like unpaid overtime- thanks Blockbuster Video) rather than formally complaining.
I’m for government regulating business/workplace practices that reduce people to soulless robots. Because society does better when its citizens are treated as human beings.
It’s very difficult to live a responsible, upstanding life when you’re always one missed phone call away from being screwed.
This young woman has a child. What kind of mothering can she give this child if she’s working these kind of hours? You could say something cruel like, “We all make choices” and “That what she gets!” But the kid in this situation didn’t make any choice. He has a mother who likely will not be able to keep any parent-teacher conferences. And it’s not like bailing out of the rat race is an option for her, since social welfare benefits are now being tied to employment.
Society is not improved in any way by a system that runs its laborers ragged.
As a small ‘l’ libertarian I would agree with you except for the fact that it is also a terrible business practice. I wouldn’t outlaw such a thing overall because that is how I survived in high school. I worked at the local supermarket and was a really good ‘part-time’ employee that got called into work almost every day for two years when other people called in as unavailable. I wanted the money (a grand $3.35 an hour at the time) and I once worked 72 hours in the same week I was going to school (I slept during class). It sounds terrible but that made me financially independent from my parents by age 16 and I have been ever since then. I bought my own brand new truck, clothes, food and everything else. I wouldn’t want to take that opportunity away from a younger version of me.
However, speaking as senior consultant for mega-corps today, on demand scheduling is not a viable idea in the long- term. It is a symptom of a much larger information and operations problem if it is chronic. You cannot run a successful company that way in the long term because it creates worker dissatisfaction, quality control problems and, again, it indicates that management does not really know what they are doing which is a much bigger issue. All operations have some version of this issue but there are good and bad ways to address it. My current client simply offers off-schedule and on-demand hours in advance at 1 1/2 times pay on a volunteer basis. There are almost always volunteers but, if there aren’t for times such as a holiday weekend, they bump it up to 2x or more pay until they get the people they need.
That is a very good and fair system. No one is forced into working off-schedule hours, those that want to can for extra money, and management is strongly discouraged from screwing up so that they need to make last minute changes. That it the real solution to it for everyone involved including the business itself. Never treat your employees like slaves because it will have repercussions.
Worker flexibility makes it easier for management. Not more profitable - easier. I’m convinced that if my management didn’t have to pay overtime, they’d just roster the 4 of us for one 42 hour shift each.*
*I exaggerate. But they’d just roster us double shifts to handle leave – that way they wouldn’t have to think about changing the roster.
If you can’t predict more than a few days in advance how many people you’ll need on an average day, then you suck at scheduling. Blaming your employees for failure to schedule them in a timely fashion is an additional indicator of suckage.
If it’s a not-average day and you suddenly need an additional N people, you need to have N+ peoples’ home phone numbers so you can call them and ask if they’re willing to work overtime, for which you will gladly pay them, otherwise, see above re: sucking.
If it’s bad for business, then the market will take care of it. It may not eliminate it completely, but it will make it a marginal problem. There might be humanitarian reasons for regulating this practice, but saying that the government needs to tell people how to run their businesses doesn’t make much sense to me. And if you argue that, well, this is a long term problem that the market will be slow to eliminate, that just sounds like you want to make a prediction that can’t be disproven in our lifetimes.
I don’t know. Maybe they’d overbook and send the extras home. Seems cheaper that way…short term. Although I see from one of the articles I linked that NY at least requires 4 hours of pay for people who show up “for a scheduled shift.” How last-minute they’re allowed to unschedule a shift, I don’t know.
The point wasn’t that it was or wasn’t bad for business. The point was that it is terrible for the employees. The Invisible Hand Of The Free Market will not eliminate this, only government action can regulate it. Sometimes yes, the government must tell businesses what they can’t do in order to protect the workers, who otherwise are helpless. And don’t jump in chiming that they can work elsewhere. Oftentimes, they can’t. The current economy is a buyer’s market for labor. When businesses actually have to compete for workers, you might have a point.
I think it’s only fair to compensate people for showing up. Considering how far some people have to commute every day and the expense of public transit/taxis/tolls, showing up to work only to be sent home is not just a time inconvenience. It’s money out of someone’s pocket. Why should someone who is already making only minimum wage be screwed over like this just because management can’t do a better job with scheduling?
I wonder how late they can cancel though, for states where there are laws. And I don’ t know if those laws are the norm. There are people here in DC who commute 2 hours each way. Now, generally not for retail jobs. But if you have to drop the kids off, then head to work, there could be situations where you’re already out the door before they tell you you’re not needed. Especially if you’re relying on the buses here, which are slow.