As COVID makes its way through the US, employers are cutting shifts, furloughing employees, or laying them off. Daniel Schneider points out that cut shift can feel like a job loss for workers.
Walmart is described as being uniquely positioned to benefit during the pandemic through its business, however, 347,000 of its employees do not have sick paid leave or do not take advantage of it.
Based on 2018-2019 survey data, The Shift Project published a report on what paid sick leave access looks like across the largest companies in the US. Many of the workers most affected, including fast-food and grocery workers, are the ones who have the most contact with people, posing a great health concern.
Employers' responses to COVID-19 have varied, with some implementing paid sick leave policies while others asking employees to take weeks of unpaid leave. Adding to this instability is the volatile schedules that many service sector workers experience which makes accessing social services even more challenging.
The New York Times published Shift data on paid sick leave at large national chains, revealing which companies provide paid sick leave to their frontline workers, and which do not.
At an event presented by the Fair Work Week NJ Coalition, members discussed newly introduced legislation aiming to protect minimum wage and service industry workers against unpredictable scheduling practices. In January, The Shift Project released a report examining schedule instability and unpredictability in New Jersey.
SACRAMENTO – California lawmakers are considering a bill to curtail unstable and unpredictable schedules for hourly workers. State Senator Connie Leyva (D-Chino) introduced SB 850, also called the "Fair Scheduling Act of 2020," which would compensate workers for on-call shifts and for shift cancellation without notice. Shift Co-Director Daniel Schneider points to the gap in scheduling practices for workers of color (particularly women of color) compared to their white counterparts as a particularly concerning aspect of just-in-time scheduling.
Brigid Schulte plumbs the depths of just-in-time scheduling research in this piece for Washington Monthly. "Despite the scope of the problem, Schneider and Harknett quickly realized that there was no data about what was going on. 'We're so focused on wages in our labor-force surveys in the United States,' Schneider said. 'This is different. This is about time.'"
SEATTLE, WA – The Shift Project's evaluation of Seattle's Secure Scheduling Ordinance was released this week as part of a joint report published by the West Coast Poverty Center at the University of Washington. Researchers found that workers experienced more advance notice after the law was implemented, but did not find significant impacts related to the provisions for on-call shifts, cancellations and "clopenings." Seattle was one of the first cities in the nation to pass a fair workweek law.
