Philadelphia could become the next major city to require fair scheduling in the fast food and retail industries. City council member Helen Gym has introduced a bill that would require employers in those industries to give workers two weeks notice of schedules, pay workers for hours that are scheduled and then canceled, and give existing workers a chance to pick up hours rather than having more workers hired for unpredictable part-time work. Right now, workers can’t plan their budgets and struggle to find childcare as their own hours are so unpredictable, as a teenage Target worker trying to help her mother pay the bills told the city council:
“There’s no way to support a family of seven or do any financial planning when my hours range constantly from 20 to 35 hours per week,” the 19-year-old West Philadelphian said in written testimony at the March hearing. She was called in to work that day so couldn’t attend the hearing in person. “We have an eviction notice on our house, but I don’t even know what rent I can afford, so how can I look for a new apartment?”
Business lobby groups are predictably opposing the measure.
● The Las Vegas union that learned to beat the house:
For 65 years Nevada has been a “right-to-work” state, one where union-represented workers can opt out of paying dues, even though the union is still legally obligated to bargain on their behalf. [...]
Yet the Culinary has found a way to thrive in Nevada. The union now represents 57,000 workers at the majority of casinos and hotels on the strip and all but one casino downtown. (Its sister union, Bartenders Local 165, accounts for 3,500 of those members.) Even though the right-to-work law means none of those workers can be required to support the union through their paychecks, more than 95 percent of those workers choose to pay full union dues anyway, keeping the union on strong financial footing. That is an astounding rate by any measure.
● Pregnancy discrimination is rampant inside America's biggest companies, Natalie Kitroeff and Jessica Silver-Greenberg report at the New York Times. But while their examples of straightforward pregnancy discrimination—like the Walmart worker who was denied light duty because her supervisor had seen Demi Moore do acrobatics while very pregnant on TV (it was actually a stunt double)—are important, it’s pretty clear that this isn’t just pregnancy discrimination but maternity discrimination:
Each child chops 4 percent off a woman’s hourly wages, according to a 2014 analysis by a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Men’s earnings increase by 6 percent when they become fathers, after controlling for experience, education, marital status and hours worked.
● A fight over tipping is tearing progressives apart in Washington, D.C. (For what it’s worth, people I respect don't seem to be torn apart, and they’re voting yes.)
● Five lessons from the history of public sector unions.
● Nashville painters aim to build immigrant base.
● While we wait for the Supreme Court to use the Janus case to gut public sector unions, here's some real information on the roles they fill and pay gaps they face.