Welcome back Chaise Lounge readers! It’s been a beautiful fall week here in North Carolina. I know that many of you have experienced some weather events, and I hope that you came through unscathed. This week’s main article digs into how algorithms disrupt the lives of workers in the hospitality and care economies, which are workplaces inhabited primarily by women. Placing profit over people is not a uniquely American habit, but in this case, the companies are finding it hard to find workers. It’s not that no one wants to work, it’s that no one can afford to work for these companies. But first, a look at some news from the week.
National News Updates
Workers at McDonald’s Walk Out
On Tuesday, workers at McDonald’s restaurants across twelve cities walked off the job protesting the chain’s lack of addressing sexual harassment claims by employees. Walkouts have happened each year since 2018, but workers say little has been done to change the culture at franchises. Additionally, protesters report that those who do file complaints face retaliation.
Over 300,00 Women Left the Work Force in September
Women left the workforce in droves in September with over 300,000 women resigning their jobs. Job growth for women was down with women gaining 26,000 jobs in September while men gained 220,000 positions. This is the second year in a row during the pandemic where women have left the workforce when school started. With after-school care difficult to find, and a lack of employer flexibility, many women are faced with caring for their children or working.
Congressional bill seeks to end the Pink Tax on military uniforms
Women in the military are subject to a “pink tax” when it comes to their uniforms. When someone joins the military, they are given a uniform and an allowance. But military members may only use the allowance for items related to their uniforms. So items like underwear, which are more costly for women, are not included. Neither are the pumps that women must wear. The list goes on. This bill is intended to even the out-of-pocket costs for all military members.
Abortion Law Updates
Supreme Court will hear two abortion cases on November 1
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear both the United States v.Texas and The Whole Women’s Health v. Jackson cases on Monday, November 1. Decisions in either of these cases could completely upend abortion access going forward. In the Texas case, the Department of Justice argues that the way that the Texas law is constructed completely subverts the primacy of federal laws and is therefore unconstitutional. In Whole Woman’s Health, pro-abortion attorneys argue that the 15-week ban on abortion violates Roe v. Wade which allows abortion up until the point of fetal viability, around 22-24 weeks.
Interactive maps indicate how far you’ll need to travel for an abortion if Roe is overturned
The Guttmacher Institute has created a set of interactive maps that indicate how far a person will need to travel to obtain an abortion in case Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court. With twenty-six states likely to outlaw abortion if they can, the maps illustrate the hardships that those seeking abortions will endure with some needing to travel over five hundred miles one way to obtain an abortion.
Bringing Humanity Back to Worker Scheduling
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, women experience more difficulty with re-employment than men. The jobs that disappeared during the pandemic were disproportionately held by women in the leisure and hospitality, child care, and health care industries. But women are not necessarily coming back to work. According to the National Women’s Law Center, women hold 2.9 million fewer jobs than they did before the pandemic. While there are many reasons that women may decline to return to work, perhaps the ways that these workplaces do not match workers’ needs is the biggest of all. The poor pay, lack of child care, and the fact that workers are not given a regular schedule are all factors that make working in those fields undesirable.
As the federal government attempts to tackle the child care issue, which is primary in solving employment issues, in this article, we will take a look at another factor: the lack of a predictable schedule for employees. Without a predictable schedule, workers are unable to make plans for childcare, work another part-time job, or make a simple doctor’s appointment. It is a basic act of dignity for an employer to give an employee a schedule in advance. But over time the needs of shareholders to make maximum profits have eroded the way that workers are viewed. Instead of employees being valued as an important asset to the company, they are used as cogs in the wheel of production. The more efficient the production, no matter the impact on the human “cog”, the better the outcome for shareholders.
How did we get here?
When I was in high school, back in the 1980s, I had a retail job in the local mall. Every week, I would receive my schedule for the following week, and it usually included one night of being “on-call”. The purpose of being “on-call” was in case one of my co-workers called in sick. While I did not like having to reserve that time in case I needed to work, I understood the necessity of it and appreciated that if I was sick, I knew that someone else was there to take my place. I was rarely called in anyway.
Fast forward to the 2010s and my daughter starts working for NY & Co clothing chain. She is given just a few hours of guaranteed work a week on her schedule and then told that she is “on-call” for multiple days. No one tells her that she is responsible for calling in. She assumes they will call her in if she is needed. So she gets in trouble the first week for this. The next week, she calls in, but when she does, no one answers the phone. This happens over and over for weeks. Insanity, right? Eventually, she quit this ridiculous system for restaurant serving.
At the restaurant, she is given her schedule for the following week on Thursday, and that is only if the manager gets around to making the schedule. And, the schedule is not posted electronically, so she has to go into the restaurant to see it. If she is not scheduled to work that day, she must make this 20-minute drive just to see her schedule. And this is now, in 2021! Isn’t it interesting that they can use computers to make the schedule, but not post it for their employee’s benefit? So, if she needs to make any kind of personal appointment, she has no way of knowing if she will be scheduled for work. Because she has a number of chronic health issues, it can be difficult to make the appointments she needs to stay healthy.
Now imagine if you have children. With this type of scheduling, you cannot line up your child care ahead of time. If you are dependent on public transportation and you are scheduled outside of the hours it runs, you will need to make alternate arrangements on the fly. Sometimes employers send you home after calling you into work for an hour or two.
Algorithms take precedence over people, especially women
In recent decades, many retail, restaurant, and other businesses use automated scheduling software based on algorithms that indicate foot traffic in the businesses. The algorithms dictate how many workers will be needed at each hour of the day depending on the season, time of day, holiday sales, etc. In this model, the employee’s work is commodified just like the inventory of the store. Because women make up a larger sector of the employees working in retail and restaurants, it affects their lives more often. According to the Census Bureau, 56.5% of retail workers are women. Women also make up 71% of restaurant servers.
Workers are scheduled for many shifts each week “on-call”. When it is getting busy, they call you in. When it is slow, they send you home. These are hourly workers who have no way to know what their weekly income will be. They are at the mercy of an algorithm. It does not matter if you took three buses to get to work and you have only been there for an hour. The manager can send you home if it is not busy enough. And, of course, when you are “on-call” for a part-time hourly job, you cannot commit to another part-time hourly job. These employers are tying up all of their employees' time in an effort to make the most money that they are not sharing with their employees.
What if we gave workers their schedules ahead of time?
Workers are desperate to regain control over their schedules. In one survey of hourly employees by Shiftboard, 49% of respondents said that they would be willing to take a modest pay cut to gain more control over their work schedules. That data point alone speaks volumes. These are people who are already in low-paying jobs with no benefits, and they are willing to take a pay cut to simply have some control over their schedules.
In a recent research paper, Kristen Harknett, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF, studied the effects of Seattle’s Secure Scheduling ordinance which was enacted in 2017. The ordinance required employers to provide workers with their schedules two weeks in advance. New York City and Oregon have passed similar laws. The researchers were looking to see if there is a connection between work schedule predictability and worker health and economic security. They found that when workers were given their schedules two weeks ahead of time, their levels of happiness increased, their sleep improved, and food and housing insecurity improved, all by around ten percentage points.
These findings are significant. By simply providing a stable work environment where employees can predict when they will be working, their quality of life improves accordingly. Providing employees with the dignity of valuing their time led to better emotional outcomes. One thing the study found that was disconcerting is that many employers are just not complying with the ordinance, and there does not seem to be an effective mechanism for making that happen.
“No one wants to work anymore”
As restaurants and retail businesses are working their way back into a profitable business, they are having difficulty attracting workers. While these employers claim that “no one wants to work”, the real issue is the way they treat their employees. It is no wonder that these employers are having difficulty finding people to work for them. With low wages and unpredictable schedules, they have created a distasteful stew of undesirable ingredients for any employee. Bringing dignity to workers’ lives through predictable scheduling would go a long way toward attracting employees.
Just for Fun
Saw this bird earlier this week on Twitter and couldn’t believe it was real!
Bringing Humanity Back to Worker Scheduling