Starbucks
announced revisions on Thursday to the way the company schedules its
130,000 baristas, saying it wanted to improve “stability and
consistency” in work hours week to week.
The
company intends to curb the much-loathed practice of “clopening,” or
workers closing the store late at night and returning just a few hours
later to reopen, wrote Cliff Burrows, the group president in charge of American stores, in an email to baristas across the country.
He
specified that all work hours must be posted at least one week in
advance, a policy that has been only loosely followed in the past.
Baristas with more than an hour’s commute will be given the option to
transfer to more convenient locations, he wrote, adding that scheduling
software will be revised to allow more input from managers.
The changes came in response to an article on Wednesday in The New York Times about a single mother struggling to keep up with erratic hours set by automated software.
“This
has given us a real opportunity to hear partners’ voices and say, ‘Are
we being clear enough, and are our intents and practices being
followed?’ ” Mr. Burrows said in a phone interview.
Though
Mr. Burrows vowed in his letter to revise the company’s scheduling
software, he could not say exactly how in the interview.
The
change comes amid a growing push to curb scheduling practices, enabled
by sophisticated software, that can cause havoc in employees’ lives:
giving only a few days’ notice of working hours; sending workers home
early when sales are slow; and shifting hours significantly from week to
week. Those practices have been common at Starbucks, and many other
chains use even more severe methods, such as requiring workers to have
“open availability,” or be able to work anytime they are needed, or to
stay “on call,” meaning they only find out that morning if they are
needed.
Some
Starbucks workers greeted Thursday’s announcement with mixed feelings.
“I’m generally pretty positive about Starbucks,” Amber Tidwell, a
barista in Fresno, Calif., said in a phone interview.
“Encouraging
managers not to rely entirely on the automated software is the best
thing they can do. But I’m doubtful of how many managers will actually
do it,” she said, because of the wide variation in how managers at
different stores treat their employees.
As
for the notice, “one week is actually a low-road standard,” said Carrie
Gleason, a labor organizer with the Center for Popular Democracy,
adding that many chains provide two or three weeks’ notice of hours. On
Thursday night, she and other organizers posted a petition for Starbucks workers calling for better work policies.
Starbucks
prides itself on progressive labor practices, such as offering health
benefits and stock. But its goals — treating workers well and making
profits — are in tension. Baristas across the country say that their
actual working conditions vary wildly, and that the company often fails
to live up to its professed ideals, by refusing to offer any guaranteed
hours to part-time workers and keeping many workers’ pay at minimum
wage.
Scheduling
has been an issue at headquarters for years, said Tim Kern, who was an
executive at Starbucks for two decades and is now starting a small
coffee-roasting company of his own. “Labor is the biggest controllable
cost for front-line operators, who are under incredible pressure to hit
financial targets,” he said.
Jannette
Navarro, the San Diego barista whose scheduling troubles were
chronicled in the Times article, was still trying to stay afloat
Thursday, looking for a permanent place for her and her 4-year-old son,
Gavin, to live. She said a more stable schedule and paycheck would allow
her to plan how much she could afford to spend on a new home,
re-establish a routine for her son, and maybe return to community
college.
“I want to surprise everyone,” she said, “because no one is expecting anything of me.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/us/starbucks-to-revise-work-scheduling-policies.html
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