Kristen Harknett was invited to give a Keynote Address at the annual conference of the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER). The annual conference theme was “Advancing Economic Prosperity through Data Innovation.” The talk abstract appears below.
Taking Our Time: The Consequences of On Call Expectations in the US Labor Market
Millions of economically precarious U.S. workers live at the beck and call of their employers. In retail and food service industries, low wages and insufficient work hours relegate workers to a life on call, constantly at risk of being added to or dropped from ever-changing work schedules. This talk weaves together in-depth interviews with original survey data from over 100,000 service sector workers to paint a portrait of dehumanized scheduling, in which employers assign schedules with little regard for human needs for rest, consistency, or advance notice to allow for planning. Drawing on a decade of research, I demonstrate the broad toll of these on-call work expectations for workers, families, and businesses, and discuss the grassroots and legislative efforts to rein them in.
