The retail and food service industries are being revolutionized by new software that allows managers to track real-time sales and fill their labor needs with “just-in-time” scheduling. This practice effectively puts all employees on call. This isn’t to be confused with dispatch software used by companies that have a field workforce, that schedules the jobs they need to be at and when they need to be there. The software we are referring to allows employers to call employees in at will. It may boost profits, but its impact on low-income workers is anything but benign.
“Scheduling is now a powerful tool to bolster profits, allowing businesses to cut labor costs with a few keystrokes. ‘It’s like magic,’ said Charles DeWitt, vice president for business development at Kronos, which supplies the software for Starbucks and many other chains. Yet those advances are injecting turbulence into parents’ routines and personal relationships, undermining efforts to expand preschool access, driving some mothers out of the work force and redistributing some of the uncertainty of doing business from corporations to families. … For employees, however, that approach — known as ‘just-in-time’ or ‘on-call’ scheduling — often results in lower income and chaotic hours. Stephanie Luce, a professor of labor studies at City University of New York’s Murphy Institute, characterizes the widespread adoption of scheduling and so-called workforce optimization technologies as a ‘new race to the bottom.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks-workers-scheduling-hours.html?_r=1
Imagine if your boss can call you in to work at any time, with only a couple hours’ notice, work you for a couple hours, then send you home. If the job pays only minimum wage, your earnings for that day likely won’t cover your transportation to work and child care expenses. How would you even arrange child care, if you don’t have a relative willing and able to care for your child(ren) with little or no advance notice? And with such an irregular and unpredictable work schedule, how can you attend school to qualify for a better job, or work a second job to make ends meet? It may be a profitable way to do business, but it’s an unreasonable way to treat workers.
In this competitive world, it’s unlikely businesses will walk back from the labor savings this new software technology makes possible, despite the additional level of misery it inflicts on their employees; it’s probably here to stay. Instead, the software vendors and employers need to be persuaded to tweak the technology so that it also accommodates their employees’ needs. They may not have a choice. If they don’t, at some point, they won’t be able to get people to work for them.
If you follow reporting about the economy at all, you may have heard that America’s workforce participation rate is plunging. This refers to the percentage of able-bodied working age adults participating in the workforce by either working or looking for a job. It’s widely assumed, among those not paying close attention, that this is being caused by baby boomer retirements. But that’s not the case. The employment rate among the 65+ population segment is actually increasing (possibly due to destruction of pensions and retirement security). The big drop in people working is occurring among those in their prime working years — the 25 to 54 age cohort.
Political conservatives argue that entitlement programs have undermined America’s fabled “work ethic” and made people “lazy.” They’re wrong. Employers, not workers, are causing the problem. It’s not our work ethic, but the incentive to work, that’s being systematically destroyed by the relentless pursuit of profits at the growing expense of workers. If you make working difficult, unpleasant, and unrewarding enough, people will walk away from work. You can’t expect them to put up with so much in return for so little.