The Retail Action Project’s New Student Initiative

“Sometimes, I had to shake the rat shit off the t-shirts before I folded them,” said Jonathon Cartagena, a former employee of SoHo’s alternative clothing store, Yellow Rat Bastard. In a twist of comic irony, live rats not only walked in front of Yellow Rat Bastard customers, but were found drinking in, and sometimes decomposing in the store’s toilet bowls.

 Employees claimed that although management knew of the infestation, they took no action. And beyond the working conditions, Yellow Rat Bastard employees worked long hours with illegal pay — $5.25 an hour, instead of the 2005 legal minimum of $6.75 — and no overtime compensation.

 Fed up with the rat infestation and illegal wages, Cartagena founded the Retail Action Project — an organization of retail workers dedicated to improving opportunities and workplace standards in the retail industry — in 2005, filed a class action lawsuit against Yellow Rat Bastard for the below minimum wage back pay, and won a settlement of $1.5 million.

 “When we realized our legal rights, we also realized that if we all joined together, we would have the power to win what we’d earned,” Cartagena said.

After winning four more lawsuits, the newest RAP initiative — the JustHours Campaign — is gaining momentum in the recent months by mobilizing full-time students who work in the retail industry to collectively demand consistent week-to-week work schedules and the abolition of on-call shifts at the workplace.

According to the 2012 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor, 559,530 New York City residents work in the retail industry and 39 percent of the country’s retail employees are between the ages of 17 and 25.

As RAP’s membership organizer, Cartagena can attest to the consequences of retail management’s inconsistent scheduling on employees who are also full time students.

“Companies absolutely expect you to have open availability,” he said. “Our student members always come to our office saying, “Either I go to school or I take my shift.” And you know what they have to do? Take their shift.”

In a survey conducted by RAP and City University’s Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, 39 percent of those surveyed reported their  number of work hours and schedules vary from week-to-week always and often. Thirty-two percent reported their number of work hours and schedules vary from week to week sometimes. Fifty-six percent reported that they have to be available for “call-in” or unexpected shifts. Only 17 percent of workers surveyed said they have a set work schedule.

A report compiled by the Murphy Institute and RAP titled Discounted Jobs: How Retailers Sell Workers Short argues that American corporate culture influences the unpredictable schedules. The report found that European retailers will post employee schedules as far as one year in advance, yet the same companies with businesses in the United States gives a week’s notice to their associates.

The School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago released a report called Managers’ Strategies for Balancing Business Requirements with Employee Needs. This report found that the retail industry is shifting towards “just-in-time” scheduling practices in order to increase their flexibility to hire and fire. It also states that retail managers receive their schedules almost one month in advance, but many prefer to post their employee’s schedules just a few days before the start of the work week.

Last year, RAP issued a survey to their 500 members and the results concluded that the two most pressing issues were unpredictable scheduling and on-call shifts.  Identifying these issues, the JustHours Campaign strategy to restore a fair and predictable workweek is three-fold.

First, the campaign is encouraging corporate accountability by mobilizing workers and allies to address the just-in-time practices at major retailers. Also, RAP is pushing for legal enforcement to prevent wage theft and scheduling discrimination through legal action. Lastly, the campaign is looking for policy change by advancing city and state legislative solutions for predictable  and fair scheduling.

“I’ve been on my own since I was 17 so I’ve had to work a lot of jobs,” said Eugene Lang College senior, Jessica Plaza. Since Jessica has been a full-time student at The New School, she’s worked part-time at four retailers: Ann Taylor, Anthropologie, the Halloween Spirit Store, and Ricky’s.

 “Since we don’t chose our work hours, our hours choose us, I had to make the choice between school and work all the time,” Plaza said. “It was so hard to budget my time and money because I never know how much income was coming in or even when I was working.”

According to Plaza, because of the inconsistent week-to-week work schedules, it was difficult to also allocate time for a full-time academic schedule.

 In a report conducted by Stephanie Luce at City University’s Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, and labor psychotherapist Susan Adler, managers expect open availability in their employee’s schedules, which result in unpredictable week-to-week work schedules.

This labor management practice leads to turnover instead of retention, a trend that labor Adler “structured instability” in the sense that full-time retail workers are finding their start and end-times, shifts and number of hours varying weekly often with minimal advanced notice.

Retail management views erratic schedules as flexible not inconsistent. In a marketing publication filed by the National Retail Federation Foundation, they reported that, “Part-time jobs in the retail industry also provide the scheduling flexibility students need, and offer a starting-block for those pursuing a career in the industry.” The NRFF did not respond to interview inquiries.

Lecturer Lee Adler at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Labor Relations conducted extensive scholarship in the fields of collective bargaining, labor law, and employee relations. According to Adler, the inconsistent scheduling benefits retail management.

 “It’s hard to locate any benefits for the workers. For the employer, the benefit is obvious—they have a ready and willing workforce, who knows that if they don’t answer their call, they could be fired or even get a worse schedule,” said Adler.

 Gianna Leone is a full-time student in the Design and Management program at Parsons and worked as a part-time stylist for LF Stores in SoHo for the past two years. Leone said that while working for LF Stores, she received her work schedule the day before the start of the week. “It’s really stressful to plan ahead when I can’t commit to anyone or anything because I don’t know my work schedule until the last possible minute.”

 Leone recounted a time when she was working for a school project and her employers called, asking her to join a conference call, giving only a 45-minute notice.

 “I was in the middle of a group meeting and they just didn’t even care,” she said. “I wanted to take the call, because it would’ve made me look good with LF, but I couldn’t leave my group.”

Because of a constant frustration with scheduling, Leone quit LF Stores.

Cartagena said that Leone’s experience is not uncommon. “It’s the difficulty of planning ahead that makes it next to impossible to do both. That’s where we hope the JustHours Campaign will be successful.”

“Whenever I was about to see my schedule, I felt like I was playing the lottery,” said Wesley Johnson, a full-time student in the Communication Design program at Parsons. During his first two years at Parsons, Johnson worked part-time at Topshop. In addition to his job at Topshop, and academic workload, Johnson had an internship at Teen Vogue. Because of the erratic work scheduling and rigorous academic responsibilities, Johnson said he developed anxiety, so he quit Topshop.

If the Retail Action Project’s track-record is an indication of the outcome of the JustHours Campaign, then it would become plausible for full-time students to balance their academic obligations with predictable work schedules.

When asked if Leone would have stayed at LF Stories if she had a set work schedule, Leone answered, “Absolutely. I would’ve been able to plan my work week, my homework, and my outside life in the right way.”

Cornell University Lecturer Lee Adler believes it all depends upon the employer’s respect of the full-time students’ academic schedule. If not, it would be, “very difficult.”

Adler also said, “I can’t imagine anything more unfair to a full-time or part-time worker than not knowing whether they’re going to work on a certain day but still being accountable to their employer to work.”

 

With reporting by: Rafaella Gunz