In a blog post on Wednesday, Andi Owen, global president for Banana Republic at Gap Inc., announced that the company will end the practice of on-call scheduling and commit to giving employees at least 10 days advance notice of their schedules.
All five of its brands will phase out on-call scheduling, in which employees are required to be available to work on a given day but not guaranteed that they will actually be asked to come in, by the end of September. They will also all provide workers with at least 10 to 14 days notice of when they’ll be working by early 2016.
The company says the changes come from an evaluation it’s conducted over the last year to improve its scheduling practices along with a pilot it launched in July of last year with the help of Professor Joan Williams of UC Hastings’ College of Worklife Law. But it also comes after New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman began an investigation into the scheduling practices of 13 large retailers and whether they violated a New York state law and sent them all a letter. The investigation had already produced results: earlier this month, Abercrombie & Fitch announced it would end on-call scheduling in New York stores by the end of the year. Those employees will also get their schedules at least a week in advance. Victoria’s Secret, which also received a letter from Schneiderman’s office, has also ended on-call shifts.
Other brands received the letter but haven’t made changes yet, including Ann Inc. (owner of Ann Taylor), Burlington Stores, Crocs, J.C. Penney, J. Crew, Sears, Target, TJX (owner of TJ Maxx and Marshall’s), Urban Outfitters, and Williams-Sonoma.
Starbucks’s scheduling practices also came under fire in a New York Times story last year, after which the company took quick action to end the practice of “clopening,” or shifts where employees close stores late at night and then have to come back in a few hours later to open them for the next day, and post schedules at least a week in advance.
But overall, employees often have to deal with erratic and difficult schedules. At least 17 percent of the American workforce has an irregular schedule, including on-call shifts, split shifts (two different shifts in one day), or rotating ones, although that is likely an undercount. Nearly half of part-time workers and just under 40 percent of full-time workers don’t find out their schedules until a week ahead or less. It’s concentrated in retail, where erratic schedules impact 27 percent of the workforce. One survey of retail workers in New York City found that 40 percent didn’t have a set minimum of hours they worked week to week and a quarter had on-call shifts.
Some lawmakers have looked at ways to address these problems. Earlier this year, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Patty Murray (WA), and Chris Murphy (CT) with Reps. Rosa DeLauro (CT) and Bobby Scott (VA) re-introduced the Schedules that Work Act, which requires at least two weeks’ notice of schedules and pay for workers who get sent home before the end of their shifts or are on call but not asked to work. In San Francisco, legislation actually passed to require retail chains to give workers at least two weeks’ notice of schedules and pay employees for on call shifts that get canceled. Similar legislation has been proposed in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.
Gap also announced that it was raising its minimum pay to at least $10 an hour early last year, a move that has since been followed by a number of large retailers.