Dive Brief:
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While the Minneapolis City Council dropped an initiative to regulate worker schedules in the face of business opposition, Target had been working with worker advocates on a potential compromise ordinance, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports.
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Target Corp., based in Minneapolis and that city’s largest private employer, worked with worker rights advocates on policy language that would have scaled back the proposed rule to require retailers and other businesses to give workers 28 days notice about their schedules.
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The issue has emerged as one nearly as important as the minimum wage because software that enables retailers to tightly control when workers staff stores are increasingly seen by policy makers and labor advocates as onerous to workers trying to meet other obligations and log enough hours to support themselves.
Dive Insight:
Algorithms in software have helped retailers cut costs through super-efficient staffing — a practice known as “just-in-time” or “on-call scheduling.” They are also making life difficult for workers who are trying to manage their households, attend school, work additional jobs, or earn enough money to get by.
And they’re inviting scrutiny from labor advocates and policy makers. In New York, for example, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent a letter to 13 retailers letting them know that their use of practice may be in violation of New York laws. New York, like seven other states and Washington DC, for example, requires employers to pay workers four hours or more of minimum wage if they report for a scheduled shift, according to the National Employment Law Project.
Many of those retailers have announced the end of the practice, in New York and in some cases nationwide.
San Francisco is among the cities that recently passed a rule requiring chain retailers to give workers two weeks notice of their schedules.
If the ordinance in Minneapolis had passed, the movement would have had yet another indication that strict scheduling that hurts workers to the benefit of retailers is untenable. And Target apparently was ready to play ball, working to scale back the proposal from 28 days notice to 14, but apparently not actually fighting it as other businesses there did.
Although this round the proposal was ultimately scuttled, the issue continues to be worked on in many states and municipalities and is likely to resurface in Minneapolis as well.
“That conversation is far from over,” Anthony Newby, director of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, one of several workers’ groups working with Target and pushing for the law, told the Star-Tribune.