This all sounds familiar to me. Airline workers at airports are much in the same position as retail workers. They are usually given small schedules that provide only about 20 hours of work a week, their schedules change every three months, and they often get hours that conflict with other employment. Their pay is abysmal, and full-time work at many stations is often only for those with at least 15-20 years of seniority. Those workers are also some of the only ones who make enough money to live off of their airport jobs. Customer service and ramp workers are now more unionized at the airlines, and those larger carriers who do not have an organized workforce generally try and match if not supersede the conditions won by unions at other carriers, and that makes it harder to organize workers who do not already belong to a union. On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 10:55:10 PM EST, Dayne Goodwin <[email protected]> wrote: Workers in 14 States Launch Largest Starbucks Union Drive Yet by Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, Feb. 20 https://www.commondreams.org/news/starbucks-union
On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 5:33 AM Dennis Brasky <[email protected]> wrote: > https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/19/opinion/part-time-workers-usa.html It’s Not Just Wages. Retailers Are Mistreating Workers in a More Insidious Way. by Adelle Waldman, NYTimes, Feb. 19 . . . There are several reasons employers have come to prefer part-time workers. For one thing, they’re cheaper: By employing two or more employees to work shorter hours, an employer can avoid paying for the benefits it would owe if it assigned all the hours to a single employee. But another, newer advantage for employers is flexibility. ... If business picks up unexpectedly, employers have a large reserve of part-time workers desperate for more hours who can be called in on short notice. Part-time work can also be a means of control. ... . . . In 2005 a revealing memo written by M. Susan Chambers, then Walmart’s executive vice president for benefits, who was working with the consulting firm McKinsey, was obtained by The New York Times. In it she articulated plans to hire more part-time workers as a way of cutting costs. At the time, only around 20 percent of Walmart’s employees were part time. The following year, The Times reported that Walmart executives had told Wall Street analysts that they had a specific target: to double the company’s share of part-time workers, to 40 percent. Walmart denied that it had set such a goal, but in the years since, it has exceeded that mark. [ Over the last decade, Walmart has quietly been reducing full-time positions and shifting to a part-time workforce. In 2005, 80% of Walmart’s associates were full-time.19 In 2018, an estimated 50% Walmart’s U.S. workforce is part-time. 20 In contrast, nationally, 29% of people working in retail are part-time.21 Trapped In Part-Time, Walmart’s Phantom Ladder of Opportunity https://united4respect.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Part-Time-Full-Report-Web.pdf ] It’s not just Walmart. Target, TJX Companies, Kohl’s and Starbucks all describe their median employee, based primarily on salary and role, as a part-time worker. Many jobs that were once decent — they didn’t make workers rich, but they were adequate — have quietly morphed into something unsustainable. ... in the real world few workers in certain sectors are given the option of working full time. . . . ... every time we talk about hourly wages without talking about hours, we’re giving employers a pass for the subtler and more insidious way they’re mistreating their employees. . . . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29026): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29026 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104466159/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
