Working to make work better
With help from some employers, retail and fast-food workers begin to receive a greater say in the hours they work
Retail and fast-food workers gaining more of a say in scheduling
In an occasional series, USA TODAY explores the challenges of balancing work and life.
For Natasha Oxley, a two-year degree took almost four years to earn because her retail jobs gave little notice of when she’d work, and little leeway when she needed to switch shifts.
“There were a lot of classes that I ended up failing because I couldn’t catch up with the work or couldn’t attend the class,’’ says Oxley, 24, who never got more than three days’ notice about her work schedule while studying visual merchandising and marketing at the Art Institute of New York City. “It’s not fair to ask of somebody to drop everything ... especially if they’re not even paying you that much.’’
The work lives of fastfood cooks, sales clerks and other hourly employees are increasingly dictated by software programs that automatically schedule when they are supposed to report to their jobs. The computer algorithms have freed managers from spending hours mapping out schedules and helped companies ensure they don’t pay more people than they need when the lunch rush is done. But those platforms can wreak havoc on the paychecks and personal lives of workers, who may not be able to plan dinner, let alone shifts at a second job, because of random, often last-minute scheduling.
Pressure is building to give retail and fast-food workers a greater say in when they work, and some retailers have begun to respond.
The Container Store allows employees in Houston to swap hours via mobile app. Gap banned on-call shifts, which require employees to be available for work whether or not they are ultimately needed. Last month, New York City joined San Francisco and Seattle in passing a law that requires retail and fast-food workers to have ample notice about their schedules and to be paid when a shift is canceled at the last minute. Roughly 17% of employees are on-call or on rotating or otherwise varying shifts, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
“Just this question of time and being able to know when you’re picking your kid up from school would help millions of Americans,’’ says Louis Hyman, a labor historian who teaches at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “We talk about how important it is for people to go to school and retrain, but it’s not possible if a class meets at X time every week and your schedule at work floats around. So there are all these ways volatility in scheduling makes it very difficult for people to have any kind of certainty in the rest of their lives.’’
On May 24, the New York City Council passed a “Fair Workweek” legislative package that requires fast-food restaurants and retailers to give employees two weeks’ notice of their work schedule. Employees would have to be paid for changes to their shifts that they were told about in less than the required 14 days.
The New York legislation mirrors a San Francisco law passed in 2014 and a similar bill in Seattle that will go into effect July 1.
“New scheduling technologies have allowed employers to implement last-minute scheduling practices that force workers to be available at a moment’s notice,” says California Assemblyman David Chiu, who co-authored the San Francisco law when he was president of the city’s board of supervisors.
The San Francisco law applies to retail and food service chains with at least 20 local employees and at least 20 locations world- wide. They are required to give workers two weeks’ notice of their assigned hours and to pay them for on-call shifts that they’re never called for, as well as changes to their hours that are made less than a week before the employee’s next schedule.
A report in 2014 from the University of Chicago found that 41% of young hourly workers learned of their assigned shifts within a week or less, and 50% said their
“... being able to know when you’re picking your kid up from school would help millions.” Louis Hyman, Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations
“Everybody has friends and family who’ve worked in a local business, so we understand what it feels like on both sides of the equation.” John Waldmann, founder and CEO, Homebase
employers came up with the schedule without their input.
Last-minute schedules that don’t take employees’ needs into account can be a particular challenge in the “gig economy,” as more workers balance a work life that may include working for a restaurant, selling in a store and driving for ride-hailing services such as Uber or Lyft. From 2005 to 2015, 94% of the jobs created in the USA were on-call, freelance or contractual, according to a Princeton study. Labor activists and others say it can be difficult to plan hours at one job when you don’t know when you will have to show up at another.
John Waldmann, founder and CEO of Homebase, a firm that helps primarily small businesses move work scheduling online, has software that enables employees to trade shifts via a laptop or mobile app.
“A lot of these automatic scheduling tools lean most to what the needs of the business are,” Waldmann says. “We want to make tools that are great for businesses but make it easy to accommodate the needs of their employees as well. ... Everybody in (our) company has worked hourly jobs. Everybody has friends and family who’ve worked in a local business, so we understand what it feels like on both sides of the equation.”
In 2015, Gap, whose brands include Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy, got rid of on-call shifts after an inquiry into on-call practices by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Schneiderman said at the time that Abercrombie and Fitch and Victoria’s Secret also decided to end such shifts.
Other store chains pilot more employee-friendly uses of scheduling software. Container Store employees in the Houston area take part in a pilot in which they are able to swap hours and say when they’re available for work through the Kronos mobile app and website. They are able to use the app to ask for time off and see their schedules and time cards.
“We know that shift swaps are huge from an employee engagement perspective as it gives employees more control over their own schedule,” The Container Store’s store operations director Paul de Freitas said in a statement.
In January, Target, which uses software to create employee schedules that are reviewed manually by store managers, began to pilot an app in 130 stores that allows employees to see their schedules and switch hours. Macy’s has a software system that takes into account employees’ shift choices while making sure the stores have the right number of staffers at all times.
Though some retailers embrace technology that empowers employees, some business advocates are concerned about the flurry of local laws that dictate how businesses handle scheduling. The National Retail Federation, which represents the industry, said no executives from the group were available for an interview. In a statement, the NRF said, “We are a firm believer that businesses should be making decisions that are best for their customers and employees so that they can continue to remain viable in a highly competitive industry. A one-size-fits-all, government-mandated solution ignores the realities of what it takes to run a business and adds to the growing number of laws and regulations that drive up consumer costs and contribute to the loss of jobs in communities the retailer serves.”
Oxley, who has worked for Nathan’s Famous, Macy’s and Target is glad to see New York City’s new law. A member of the Retail Action Project, a group focused on improving the rights of workers, Oxley says she has seen friends quit inflexible jobs because they couldn’t arrange child care. She has struggled to budget amid fluctuating hours.
“You never really know what your schedule might look like ... so you never know what your financial situation will look like,” she says. “As soon as you get paid, you want to stretch that out as much as you can.”
Oxley works at a consignment store on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She is back in school, studying nursing at Medgar Evers College — a career path that could allow her to leave retail behind for good.