<p>The job that I had in college was second-shift at a hospital and it was often, but not always, quiet so that I could study. Other people I know had security jobs. They had to do their rounds but had lots of time to study in-between.</p>
<p>I had to wear shoes, pants and a dress shirt at the hospital job - that was easily manageable.</p>
<p>Seems like a great opening for labor union organizers–the balance of power in retail is way too lopsided.</p>
<p>The balance of power is the relationship between supply and demand.</p>
<p>Is there a website where people report these practices with regards to their employers?</p>
<p>We are having the same problems with and ice cream shop that dd is working for. She gets called out and called in so much. She doesn’t even get breaks. She works 11 hours shifts with only 30 minutes breaks sometimes. No overtime for the 11 hour days.</p>
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<p>This book was on my D’s summer reading list before freshman year in HS. I read it, too. Some of the parents hated that it was on the list because it was “too liberal.”</p>
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<p>One would think!</p>
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<p>I could go on and on about the grocery store. (The folks on the College Class of '13 thread have read about it for years.) One of the most despicable things is when an employee is going to join the military, they do everything in their power to make him quit before he goes, so they don’t have to keep his job open for him. Thus, if he’s always made clear that he can’t work on Fridays, they start scheduling him for Fridays. And if he gets someone to cover that shift, they write him up for that. And if he used to work 32 hours a week, they’ll schedule him for 16, then 8. It is so wrong.</p>
<p>They send kids home when they are slow to save $7.25, but the chain hires people to hang around the stores in cars, spying on the employees. The employees can only smoke in one designated area outside. There was a woman who was “highly paid” (i.e. $10 an hour because she had worked there 8 or 10 years.) She walked out to the smoking area with her pack of cigarettes in her hand rather than concealed [she did not have a cigarette out, only the pack in her hand], the spy outside saw her, and she was fired.</p>
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Of course, and it was the exploitation of workers resulting from such an imbalance that led to the rise of the union movement to right the balance. It’s an old story with an old solution–these young workers are being exploited by employers holding all the power, and the only solution is for them to organize.</p>
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<p>Shareholders too. Shareholders own the company and could more easily change this behavior compared to unions.</p>
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<p>I think that a better solution would be to convince shareholders that their companies are behaving poorly.</p>
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<p>You are assuming a pretty high level of morality among shareholders. So all the WalMart shareholders read Nickel and Dimed, and they demand that WalMart pay a living wage…they can’t keep their prices at rock bottom, the shoppers turn to KMart instead, and how do the shareholders feel then?</p>
<p>If I was a litigator, I think I’d spend my retirement years trying to stop some of the abusive employment practices. </p>
<p>I don’t mind teens and young adults having to work hard at minimum wage jobs…8 hours on your feet, dealing with hot french fry grease or cranky customers can build character and make them more sympathetic bosses later in life. But many of the practices in which employers engage - because they can get away with it - are wrong.</p>
<p>Another thing to note is that when retailers are quoted as saying that someone who works full time is paid $___ an hour, and they get pats on the back for it, it is unlikely that very many workers are actually employed full time. The retailer saves money not only on hourly wages for workers who are not full time, and on benefits as well. 94% of retailers consider 30 hours a week fulltime ( so wondering if they get the benefits of actual full time employees)</p>
<p>But 41% of workers are part time. [Why</a> “Good Jobs” Are Good for Retailers - Harvard Business Review](<a href=“Why “Good Jobs” Are Good for Retailers”>Why “Good Jobs” Are Good for Retailers) D quit her Macys job, so that she could work more hours at her unionized Fred Meyer job, but it never did get to 40 hrs a week. ( but she didn’t have to wear $200 jeans every day either)
She did have retirement & medical insurance however.</p>
<p>My grandmother worked retail much of her life, at a premier dept store in downtown Seattle. ( she had a farm in Mo., but moved here so grandpa could work at Boeing during WWII ) She seemed to love her job as a saleswoman for small appliances and I loved getting to go backstage at the home of the real Santa. 
She worked hard, but was well compensated for it. ( she also had regular weekday hours)</p>
<p>emerald, I remember when I was growing up, people in our community talked badly about Sears, because they bragged about how well their full time employees were compensated, but kept most working 32 hours a week so they would receive no benefits. That was the exception at the time, now it’s the rule.</p>
<p>These practices seem like a recipe for poor service for the customer. I like to shop at retail stores where the employees know something about the products and can advise me a bit: REI for outdoor equipment and Nordstrom come to mind. Don’t know if they engage in these sorts of employee practices or not.</p>
<p>I feel like some of us might be talking about different things, too. To me, there is a big difference between taking a job with set hours where they might occasionally, maybe even frequently, call you and ask if you can pick up an extra shift-- and a job where they tell you, “Hey, you’re not scheduled this weekend, but make sure you’re home by your phone because you might be expected to drop everything and be here in 5 minutes if we happen to call.” When my sister’s employer does this, she is stuck in the immediate area of work all day even though she can’t go to work and get paid because, if they just so happen to call, she’ll be expected to be there as fast as they would have expected otherwise-- because heck, they warned her she was on call! In effect she’s on their clock without being compensated.</p>
<p>I can tell you it is an awful kind of job to have while you’re a student. How do you plan anything when you don’t know if/when you work? My job wasn’t nearly as bad as my sister’s since I was hardly getting any hours to begin with, but whenever anybody asked me which day I was available to meet for a study group or something I had no idea what to tell them. Or maybe I want to go to a study group for Class A on Friday, but I have no idea if I can go because I have an exam Monday in Class B and I may or may not have a chance to study for it on Saturday. It may be doable but it’s a royal PITA.</p>
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<p>Apple was criticized for labor practices in other countries (many, which
later were shown to be untrue) despite the practices of Apple vendors
being the same at other vendors. Apple was singled out because they
are a highly visible company. They have made environmental and labor
changes because of public complaints - valid or invalid. They want to
maintain a good relationship with their customers and their shareholders.</p>
<p>I currently own two large retail companies. I just had a look at the
Corporate Social Responsibility Report of one of the companies. It
does address their responsibilities to their employees, and talks
about the career tracks available to their associates. It provides
more detail about the protections to workers of their vendors.</p>
<p>It’s actually quite an impressive document.</p>
<p>I was thinking of writing a letter to investor services to see if they
practice what is described in this thread.</p>
<p>Shareholders are people too. Yes, at the end of the day, they want a
good return on their investments. But there are a lot of choices in
investments and I’d personally prefer owning companies that treat
their employees well over those that don’t. Those companies (assuming
good management and economic prospects) should do better over the long
haul. I have seen companies that go overboard on providing employee
benefits too - those typically go bankrupt or something like that if
they can’t get the balance right.</p>
<p>This isn’t new. And I agree, it’s not fair to the employees. I try very hard not to do this for my staff – we guess when we will be busy and staff accordingly.</p>
<p>My advice for young people in one of these jobs is to always look busy. Assuming there are no customers to help, find <em>something</em> to do. Organizing a display, cleaning a corner, see what you can <em>learn</em> to get better at your job.</p>
<p>If I come around the corner and find employees hanging out and gossiping, you can bet some of them are going home.</p>
<p>They’re able to get away with it so easily because, as someone said before, there’s ALWAYS a continuous supply of teens/college students/part time workers applying for these jobs. One gets sick of the absurd treatment and quits? No problem, there’s always someone else. I’m home in NYC for the summer from college and I applied to quite a few retail jobs when I first got here, and many said “We don’t know how many hours we’ll be able to give you if you’re hired, maybe 6-12 to start with, but it’ll be flexible- you may have some hours when you’re on call so you might be able to work more.” Doesn’t make it sound so bad, but when I speak to friends who have jobs like these, the general consensus is “I get scheduled for 4 hours officially and then I sit by the phone for the entire rest of the week because they may or may not call me in. Usually they don’t.”</p>
<p>Thankfully I was very luckily able to find a part-time office job with set hours and no wishy-washiness, but plenty of people I know get stuck in retail because no one else is willing to hire college kids who are gone after 2 or 3 months, and they NEED at least some kind of summer job to pay for various expenses/save up for the year. For retail employers, the large turnaround doesn’t matter at all, because there’s always someone else applying. It’s a vicious cycle, but there’s almost no way to end it, because students will continue to agree to work these jobs- it’s better than nothing at all, though not by much.</p>
<p>Just looked up the grocery store. On core company social performance, someone has given them a 4.7 out of 10.</p>
<p>I have a look at Joann’s Fabrics, one of the retailers mentioned here. I didn’t find a corporate social responsibility document - I did see a benefits list for employees.</p>
<p>The two companies that I own do have corporate social responsibility documents. They are both profitable companies with stock prices near their all-time highs and they are both growing companies. I guess that I would have to do more investigation on their labor practices - my son has a friend working at one of the companies - I would guess that they treat their employees well given their reputation. The other one - I shop there but don’t know anyone that works there.</p>
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Wow. Really? How big are the companies that you own? Do you set the employer/employee policies for these companies?</p>
<p>This “on call/send home” practice isnt limited to college kids. I had a friend, in her early 60s offered this kind of arrangement. It feels like handcuffs. What happens if they call and you are not available? Do they call the next person who is also on permanent on call status or do you get taken off the schedule? Seems awfully unfair to the employee. Be on call 24-7 but we’ll call when we wish and send you home if we dont need you. Yuk.</p>
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<p>It’s a trading expression - as in I own shares in. It’s not a trivial amount of shares (some activists buy a share of a company so that they can attend shareholder meetings to ask embarrassing questions or make embarrassing proposals).</p>
<p>Even before Sally became CEO, REI was considered a good place to work.
[REI</a> on Annual List of 100 Best Companies to Work For](<a href=“http://www.rei.com/about-rei/100-best-companies.html]REI”>http://www.rei.com/about-rei/100-best-companies.html) </p>
<p>The heavily Scandinavian influence in the northwest perhaps has contributed to local businesses considering the worker rather than just the shareholder. REI is one of several cooperatives in the Seattle area ( although most of others are grocery stores),</p>
<p>A local hamburger chain pays for medical insurance for employees who work over 24 hrs a week, offers tuition help, scholarships and child care assistance. They also will pay you your hourly wage to volunteer ( up to four hrs month)
[Employment</a> - Dick’s Drive-In](<a href=“http://www.ddir.com/employment]Employment”>3_EMPLOYMENT - Dick's Drive In)</p>