Have you heard? Some municipalities around the country are finally taking employers to task for forcing their staff to work unpredictable schedules that change from week to week and even from hour to hour. The practice has exploded with the access to algorithms and technology tools that allow bosses to forecast when they should put two or three extra workers on the schedule – or when to hold them back in the break room (unpaid) if the customers don’t materialize.
The worker is essentially told: We’ll pay you for x hours (maybe) but don’t ask when those hours might be. Stay open and we’ll tell you when we need you.
I have written about this issue several times, pointing out that the practice foists scheduling problems onto the person least able to shoulder them. I have encouraged workers to leave these abusive employment situations and I have warned employers that they will eventually shrink their pool of willing workers. I have even asked the managers I know to ensure their own practices are as fair as possible to frontline staff.
Now I’ll get personal. This issue hits home for me on multiple levels, mostly from before I started on my career path as an advocate for employees and laid-off workers. I know from first-hand experience the impact of growing up in a low-income household and I know that if my parents’ schedules had not been stable, our lives would have been upended.
My mother was a waitress and my father worked as a dock supervisor for the Post Office. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, when my parents divorced, my mother’s work became the primary source of our household income. At $2 an hour and tips, that was not a lot to live on, even in the 1970s. I knew the earnings most nights because she let me empty her apron and roll the quarters and dimes for the weekly deposit – which I often made by riding my bike to the bank on Saturdays.
This is not a sad story. This is just a story, like so many others, of families that get by and move forward. Which is exactly my point: If my mother had not had consistent hours – as a senior waitress she drew the coveted 3-11 shift, Tuesday-Saturday – we would not have made it. She had no high school degree, no alternate work skills and no rich family members. Her father, my grandfather, lived under a bridge the last years of his life. Believe me when I say there wasn’t an inheritance coming her way.
My father fared better, although he wasn’t making much either. He supplemented his third-shift salary by painting houses during the day – exhausting work in itself. I have distinct memories of waking him at 9 p.m. on work nights by throwing cold water on his face and jumping back as he sputtered to his feet. After the divorce, he switched to the day schedule and began taking night classes. Eventually he had enough college credits and seniority to win postmaster roles in northern Minnesota Iron Range towns.
The connection I draw between my growing up and the current practice of employers “owning” all of their worker’s hours should be obvious: If my father’s shifts had rotated, he could not have run his side business, nor could he have taken the college classes that lifted him to another level of work. His employer would have stolen that opportunity from him.
If my mother’s schedule had shifted constantly, she would have lost the steady trade of her regular customers. This may be hard to believe, but people used to actually request their favorite servers and they would even call ahead to ensure “their” waitress was working. As the restaurant’s weekend coatcheck girl, I saw this first-hand. These high-tipping regulars who waited for a table in my mother’s section would have fallen away had it become too difficult to predict when she’d be working. If her boss had used a rotating schedule, he would have literally stolen income from her – and shot himself in the foot as well.
From my perspective, a consistent schedule is more important than just about any other aspect of work for a low-income or part-time employee. As I learned from my parents, low wages can be overcome in a number of ways but no one can climb up a ladder that someone keeps moving around.
Employers and managers, I’m going to ask you once more: Please knock it off. The same technology you’re using to call your workers in at a moment’s notice can be used to manage staffing issues more humanely. Quit forcing municipalities to draft legislation to make you do the right thing. Just pull up your big-kid pants and get this done.
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