Kristen Harknett met with Philadelphia City Council members and legislative staff to discuss The Shift Project findings pertaining to Philadelphia service sector workers. Harknett highlighted findings from The Shift Project research brief on unstable work schedule conditions reported by workers employed at large retail and food establishments in Philadelphia, and how these work schedules were linked to increased stress, difficulty meeting family caregiving responsibilities, and financial hardships.
The Shift Project released a new research brief that includes first-ever data that provides a window into Philadelphia retail workers’ lives. The majority of those surveyed experience schedule instability and unpredictability, which create hardships and stress for themselves and their families. Entitled “Working in the Service Sector in Philadelphia,” the research brief draws on survey data from 687 Philadelphia service sector workers. It documents routine instability in work schedules in the retail and food sectors in Philadelphia.
The Scholars Strategy Network (SSN) released a new Key Findings today authored by Daniel Schneider and Kristen Harknett using data from the Shift Project. The brief discusses how unstable work schedules undermine household economic security, worker health and wellbeing, and lead to unstable care arrangements for children. The brief also describes recent ordinances in San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, and Emeryville, California that aim to address unstable work schedules and underemployment. These ordinances require large employers to provide two weeks advanced notice of work schedules, to pay extra "predictability pay" for shift scheduled or changed on short notice, and to...
Daniel Schneider and Kristen Harknett received a Project Award from the Russell Sage Foundation. The project, “Who Takes the High Road? Explanations for Company-Level Variation in Precarious Scheduling,” is co-funded by the Kellogg Foundation as part of the special initiative on non-standard work. Schneider and Harknett will use survey data from the Shift project linked to firm-level characteristics in order to 1) quantify the extent to which workers at different firms experience more or less unstable schedules and 2) test several potential explanations of between- employer variations in workers’ experiences. These factors include a firm’s ownership structure, the gender and...
