Are Retailers Abusing Young Workers with Scheduling?

It wasn’t the new fall styles that drew crowds of people to the sidewalks of New York City's posh Fifth Avenue shopping district last Wednesday. Workers from major companies like Abercrombie & Fitch, Best Buy and Wal-Mart joined together to protest employment practices that they dub as abusive.

One particular practice that ignited the fervor fueling the protests is known as “on-call scheduling.” Bintou Kamara, a 22-year-old cashier, started a petition on Change.org that was mobilized into last week’s protest by the Retail Action Project. Kamara explains, “'On-Call’ shifts mean we have to call the store two hours before the shift to ask if they need us. Nine times out of ten, they tell us not to come in, but Abercrombie still demands our open availability.” She also highlighted how the unpredictable scheduling at Abercrombie & Fitch, among other places, made it difficult for employees to support themselves or even find supplemental work. 

Kamara and her co-workers enjoyed schedules of up to 33 hours a week when they were first hired, but as time went by, their hours dwindled to 5 hours a week or less. Some of those hours included on-call shifts that didn’t pan out, leaving giant gaps in work from week to week. Kamara felt that Abercrombie & Fitch added insult to injury as they continued to hire new associates despite the lack of enough hours available to sustain their current staff’s schedules. "They feel like we can't do anything, we can't fight back and it's a big company," she said.

The problem just seems to be getting worse. Alvin Ramnarain, Executive Vice President at RWDSU Local 1102 asserts, “Retailers are pioneering the worst trends in retail. With on-call scheduling, many within the retail industry are creating a class of contingent workers who are more akin to day laborers than employees.”

The law is still murky when it comes to the tumultuous retail scheduling practices trending today. According to the Retail Action Project, “Legal analysis of “waiting pay” (as defined by the Fair Labor Standards Act – FLSA), hasn’t caught up with the brave new world of on-call scheduling, but these unpaid waiting days may run afoul of basic FLSA protections.” While this sort of scheduling typically turns out to be more inconvenient than illegal, in some instances there are boundaries slowly being crossed that are exploiting retail employees.

Laws vary from state to state but in New York State, where the protests where held, there is a call-in pay law. It requires retail employers to pay their workers at the minimum wage for either 4 hours or the full extent of the scheduled shift, whichever is less, even if employees aren’t required to come in because of poor store traffic. Many employees who are called off or sent home early never see any pay beyond actual hours worked.

In Maryland, ABC News reports that a former Best Buy employee, 23-year-old Ricah Norman, had to quit school because she couldn’t support herself working two part-time jobs. Scheduling between classes and work shifts clashed, causing a constant source of stress, and something had to give. When Norman tried to talk to her supervisors she was basically told, “That's the way the business is.”

Frustrated by the cycle, Norman says, "Retailers in general need to get back to the days when they scheduled people a correct amount of hours and allowed them to have a personal life while supporting families with sufficient wages and hours, instead of revolving their lives around the companies.”

Some think unionizing is the answer. “Retail workers are facing a new level of uncertainty,” said Cassandra Berrocal, President of RWDSU Local 3, which represents more than 2,000 sales clerks, shelf stockers and clerical workers at Bloomingdale’s flagship 59th Street store. “Through the power of our union, RWDSU Local 3, workers have achieved scheduling rights that elevate the bar for scheduling standards in retail. While retailers like Abercrombie are making workers wait by the phone, unionized Bloomingdale’s workers have guaranteed hours, advanced notice of their scheduling and their scheduled shifts are respected and honored by their managers.”

Source image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net