Unions, Allies Ask Congress to Give Low-Wage Workers Some Control Over Their Schedules
When Melanie Pavone, a cashier at the Manhattan retailer Zara, comes to work, she usually doesn't know how long she'll work, how often she'll work – or even whether she'll work at all.
And that led Pavone, a member of the Retail Action Project and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, to a D.C. press conference on a new movement, the Fair Workweek Initiative, demanding legislation to force low-paying employers to give their workers more control over their hours.
“I used to have Mason,” her 4-year-old son “in child care” while she went to work at Zara, Pavone told a jammed D.C. press conference and legislative briefing about the measure. “But I can't afford it now, not on 24 hours a week or less.”
The legislation that Pavone and more than 150 unions, women's groups and community activists demand would order employers of at least 15 workers – including part-timers and temps – to give workers more control over their schedules and would ban employer retaliation against workers who make reasonable requests for reasonable scheduling.
Zara retaliated against Pavone. She used to work 35 hours weekly. When she asked for a schedule to accommodate child care for Mason – he really loved it and learned a lot, she said – the firm first cut her to 25 hours. Then it told her not to come in on Fridays, one of retail's busiest days, where workers can earn more in commissions.
Other workers told similar stories, and studies introduced at the session back them up: 20 percent-30 percent of low-wage workers must work extra hours with little or no notice, and 66 percent of food service workers, 52 percent of retail workers and 40 percent of janitors and housekeepers know their schedules a week or less in advance.
That plays hell with child care, elder care, doctor's appointments, job training, second jobs to try to make ends meet and more, and with workers who must care for their families, advocates said. And the share of U.S. workers toiling under such conditions is increasing, they warned, as those occupations are among the fastest-growing in the U.S.
They're also occupations that employ majority shares of female workers, especially minority-group women, lawmakers pointed out.
To curb such “just-in-time employment,” as one speaker termed it, the Schedules That Work Act would give caregivers, part-timers, retail, food service and cleaning workers the right to request from employers, two weeks in advance, set schedules.
That would include the number of hours the worker is scheduled for in a particular time period, set times the worker must be on call for work, advance notice of the work location, and minimal “fluctuations in the number of hours an employee is scheduled to work” daily, weekly or monthly. And if the employer calls the worker in, then sends her home, he'd still have to pay her for four hours of work.
If a worker requests specific scheduling or schedule changes, the legislation gives businesses a set of reasons to deny them, but businesses must justify the denials, in writing.
Businesses breaking the proposed law would face fines, net back pay for workers, and triple and punitive damages.
More than 150 groups signed up in three days to back the legislation, introduced July 22, by Senate Labor Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and influential House Democrats George Miller (Calif.) and Rosa DeLauro (Conn.).
Backers include the Coalition of Labor Union Women – whose executive director, Carol Rosenblatt, attended the briefing – along with RWDSU, the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Communications Workers, the School Administrators, the Bakery-Confectionery-Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers, the Teachers, the AFL-CIO, 9to5, the California School Employees, the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees, Our Walmart, the Restaurant Opportunities Centers, Transport Workers Local 100, the Transportation Communications Union/IAM, Unite Here, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and Working America.
“If you ask a retail worker what improvements can be made to their job, the response is likely to include scheduling,” UFCW President Joe Hansen, a former meatcutter, said in a statement distributed at the press conference. “Fair, flexible and reliable scheduling is a simple way to ensure workers are treated with dignity and respect.
“In a perfect world, employers would view workers as human beings with competing life demands rather than as numbers on a balance sheet. In reality, scheduling is more erratic than ever.” The legislation, Hansen added, “would ensure all workers would have the rights fought for an won by UFCW members for decades. Our contracts have long guaranteed predictable and adequate scheduling. The law of the land should do the same.”
“It's time we say, 'enough,'” said Miller, the top Democrat on the Republican-run highly ideological House Education and the Workforce Committee. “Millions of workers have no choice when it comes to their work schedules.”
“Arbitrary last-minute schedule changes make it impossible for workers to be reliable care-givers for families. Low-wage workers are being jerked around,” DeLauro added. She also noted that employers with reliable schedules for workers, which the workers know longer in advance, have more-productive workers with lower turnover.
Miller told Press Associates Union News Service afterwards he does not expect the House panel to even consider the legislation. “That's why it's so important to have Warren and Harkin,” the Senate Labor Committee chairman, on board, he said. “This is about beginning the conversation and making people aware the legislation has been introduced.”
