Retail Workers Deserve a Break This Holiday Season

By: Mary Gatta, WOW's Senior Scholar

The holiday season is in full swing, and many of us are rushing from store to store to find the perfect gifts and the best sales, doing what we can to make this a special time for our families.  Helping us navigate the aisles are tens of thousands of retail workers who are hoping to share this time with their families, too.  Sadly, many of their employers – big, profitable corporations – are making it harder this year. 

This Thanksgiving, scores of big box retail workers, including many women workers, joined retail workers in convenience stores, movie theaters, pharmacies, and liquor stores, and were forced to leave their family and friends’ dinner tables early to staff the retail superstores throughout the country as the “Black Friday” shopping experience started a day early on the day of the Thanksgiving holiday. Walmart stores opened at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, and Target, Macy’s, Kmart, Toy R Us and other stores opened at some point during the day or at midnight on Thanksgiving night. And throughout December they have remained open on extended hours—starting early in the morning and closing late at night. 

These “Thanksgiving and holiday hours” create an additional burden on our nation’s retail workers, who are already struggling to support their families on the long hours, low pay and a lack of workplace flexibility required by these jobs. And this year, these workers weren’t even able to digest their turkey dinner or spend the holiday with their families because they were forced to put on their uniforms to give these big companies a head-start on padding their profits this season. This is yet another example of the American economy shifting towards a system that prioritizes profits for a few over the health and well-being of the majority of families. 

Retail work, like other service sector work, is characterized by what UC Hastings Law Professor Joan Williams calls “just-in-time scheduling”.  In her report, she finds that many service industries, such as retail and hospitality, attempt to keep costs down and profits high by achieving a tight fit between labor supply and labor demand. This scheduling practice means that both the number of hours and timing of those hours can change day to day, week to week, and season to season at the discretion of management.

The growth of super-centers, big box stores, and 24/7 shopping has led to an increased demand for evening, night, weekend, and variable-hour shift workers. This creates unpredictability for workers, as they may have to work different hours and different days each week with no set time off. 

Working hours at these nonstandard times creates stress for workers and their families. Often child care options are not available, forcing workers to find alternative arrangements, such as informal childcare with friends and family that is often requested without much advance notice. This system of scheduling complicates the ability for workers to plan for anything other than work—be it a doctor’s appointment, child care or a family dinner.  And when working hours differ from children’s school times, it drastically reduces the amount of time families can spend together eating meals or helping with homework. 

These volatile scheduling practices are a result of employers establishing work schedules based primarily on their concerns for fluctuating customer traffic. Opening on Thanksgiving Day was a sign that many large retailers have taken this scheduling practice to the next level.  These “just-in-time” management practices have placed the costs of inconsistent customer demand on retail’s lowest paid and most vulnerable workers. Retail work is one of the fastest growing occupations for women, though not one that provides the wages women and their families need. In fact, a new report from Wider Opportunities for Women finds nearly 80% of all women who work as retail salespersons lack economic security, meaning their low wages do not all them to meet all of their basic expenses—rent, food, and child care.

Americans are saying “Enough.”  More than 200,000 people signed petitions asking the companies to open later on Friday, allowing retail workers to spend the holiday with their families.  The White House, too, is leading policy discussions, holding forums on workplace flexibility, and the Council of Economic Advisers issued Work-Life Balance and the Economics of Workplace Flexibility.  In addition, the US Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau held forums called, National Dialogue on Workplace Flexibility, in ten cities across the country.  These conversations about workplace flexibility, schedule control and the integration of work and family help develop strategies and policies that can provide scheduling control and flexibility to workers and help businesses succeed.

With this set of ideas that allow businesses to be profitable without compromising the family values this country values and needs, retailers should take note of these policies so that next year retail workers will not have to struggle to manage work and family demands, and maybe not have to ask for their turkey dinner to come in a takeout box.