The previous chapter highlighted the power of precarious scheduling at PartnershipCo. This chapter explores whether similar practices existed at ConflictCo, despite its contrasting context and internal state. One way that PartnershipCo and ConflictCo diverged significantly was with regard to insecurity. While workers at PartnershipCo experienced little employment insecurity, this was not the case at ConflictCo. It was clear that workers at ConflictCo were highly fearful of losing their jobs. This was a consequence of ConflictCo’s internal state, which made use of “at-will employment,” meaning that there was no redundancy policy, and managers were free to decide themselves which workers to keep on. Those who lost their jobs received no redundancy pay or notice. There was, therefore, a great deal of employment insecurity among the informants. If flexible discipline is found to be central to the operation of control at ConflictCo, despite the availability of traditional forms of discipline, then it significantly strengthens the case that this is a vital feature of workplace regimes in the twenty-first century. This chapter begins by investigating the existence of internal labor markets at ConflictCo. It then turns to investigating the flexible nature of time in this workplace regime.
As was the case for PartnershipCo, the absence of a strong internal labor market can be seen in the fact that pay at ConflictCo was set at only fractionally above the minimum wage in the external labor market. Also as at PartnershipCo, pay at ConflictCo had been declining in real terms, but here low pay was a major source of outrage among workers. Their low pay was commonly seen as an injustice due to how hard they worked. Omar (a worker) illustrated the relationship between the intensity of the work and discontent with the pay particularly clearly: “There are people … who bust their ass for ConflictCo … twenty-cent raises every year, what is that? … and these assistant managers, as lazy as fuck, disrespecting people, getting [a] $1,500–$5,000 bonus a year. And it’s just not fair … the workers who are making this company the money are getting cheated, are getting discredited and getting disrespected; it just irritates me, man.”
For other workers, the perception of injustice sprang from the disparity between their low pay and the profits made by ConflictCo—much of which flowed directly to the executives and shareholders. For example, Vincent (a worker) explained how his pay was so low that he was unable to afford a separate bed for his child. Vincent felt that “the thing that is most unjust is the wages that they pay us. This is a multibillion-dollar company, they make billions of dollars in profits a year, my store alone this Black Friday made over a million dollars just in that day. You know this company can afford to pay me a livable wage … I should be able to afford a stove or at least payments on a stove … We [he, his wife, and two small children] all sleep in the same room over here as I can’t afford a bed in that one. Here in America the poverty line for a family of four is $20,000 and I make close to $16,000 and I think that is the most unjust thing.”
That ConflictCo made such high profits served to highlight to workers that their low pay was not inevitable, as Mary (another worker) articulated clearly: “I’m just angry and disgusted at ConflictCo. It could be such a good place for the community, the environment, their workers, and they choose not to be, they just have to have all that money for themselves.”
Furthermore, there was little opportunity for workers to increase their wages through genuine mobility, as advancement into salaried management was highly unlikely. Within the pay structure, there was also little incremental difference between pay grades for hourly paid workers. The highest and lowest hourly skill-based pay grades were differentiated by just $1.70 per hour. Workers also received a premium of around $1 per hour if promoted to supervisor and, on average, received a raise of forty cents (5 percent of the standard rate) every year after their first eighteen months. After 6.5 years Andre’s hourly pay had increased by $3; after ten years Mary’s had increased by $6; and likewise, even after twenty years, James’s had also only increased by $6.
Therefore, on the whole, there was little evidence that internal labor market–type elements significantly shielded workers at ConflictCo from the external labor market or were a source of consent. We will, therefore, move on to consider the allocation of working time in securing workplace control—which, as we have already seen, was a significant mechanism of control at PartnershipCo.
Working time at ConflictCo was shaped by California’s at-will employment law; that is, the quantity and timing of scheduling were entirely at the discretion of management. Legally, employees had the “reciprocal” discretion not to accept the hours they were offered, and to end their employment relationship without notice. In reality, however, workers had very little ability to reject their scheduling by either ending or threatening to end their employment due to the restrictiveness of unemployment benefits combined with the high levels of unemployment and underemployment. This meant that scheduling flexibility at ConflictCo was achieved simply through managers’ direct scheduling of hours on a three-week basis, based on the head office’s projected future customer demand.
ConflictCo’s flexible scheduling was experienced by all the worker informants as requiring frequent and unpredictable changes to their schedules. Overwhelmingly, informants felt that these changes led to a large variance in their hours. Some workers even stated that they would often not be scheduled for any hours one week, but then twelve to thirty-eight hours other weeks. Hours frequently varied week by week by a factor of two or three, with the average week by week difference within the three-week schedule period being around twenty hours. This was even the case for those workers who were officially “full-time.” The informants explained how full-time status was ignored, one worker stating that full-time employees were getting as few as ten hours a week. If workers did not receive full-time hours (at least twenty-four hours), then they lost their full-time status and officially became part-time. In the process, however, they lost access to employer-provided health insurance (although most workers already lacked the required hours or found the deductibles and/or premiums too high to access it).1 Shift patterns were also irregular beyond the changing quantity of hours, with little pattern to weekly shifts. Typically, it was felt that this made the scheduling even more random and unpredictable.
During recruitment, ConflictCo would require workers to fill out an availability survey of the hours they could work. The informants suggested that, in reality, workers had little choice but to indicate full availability, otherwise they would not receive adequate hours or even be hired in the first place. The three-week schedules were frequently altered after they had been set, sometimes only one day in advance. The unpredictable nature of these changes to schedules was heightened by a lack of communication. Additionally, there was no faith in the grievance procedure as a means to improve communication and ensure that schedules were set on a three-week basis. In fact, some workers found out about changes only when they were disciplined for nonattendance, or turned up at work only to be told that they were no longer working that day.
Scheduling at ConflictCo was, for many workers, on a zero hours basis. Part-time workers were not guaranteed a minimum number of hours, while full-time workers were not guaranteed full-time hours and could unilaterally have their full-time status revoked. Workers had very little influence over this flexible scheduling, either formally (owing to the lack of collective representation) or informally (through individual discussion with a manager). A typical managerial attitude was reported to be along the lines of “Well, you can either work or go work somewhere else.” Without independent oversight or enforcement, managers even ignored ConflictCo’s company policy that schedules be set on a three-week basis, which was the only constraint on their ability to schedule workers at will.
Precarious scheduling at ConflictCo had a negative effect on workers and reduced job quality. Specifically, it impaired workers’ general work-life balance, reducing their ability to plan. Rachel (a worker) summed up the overall impact on work-life balance: “Your schedule is such a yo-yo you can’t have a life.”
The uncertainty that precarious scheduling entailed made it very difficult for workers to plan their social lives, as Brad (another worker) explained: “You can’t plan anything … It affects you whether you’re single, married with kids, whatever, because it does just take all the organization out of your life.”
The unpredictable nature of working time was also a major barrier to workers’ attempts to carry out other essential tasks, especially if they had other jobs. As Andre (a worker) explained: “You don’t know what days you’re gonna have off so what days you might actually get paid, and I have a job where I work during the day as well [as nights at ConflictCo], so it kind of just makes it that much harder because now I don’t know which day off I’m going to have to run errands.”
This unpredictability impacted workers’ general family life, for example, spending time with children and partners and undertaking family activities that required advance planning. Even if workers did manage to have their schedule changed so that they could spend time with their family, this carried the risk of an unaffordable cut in hours. A recurring concern raised in the interviews was the impact that flexible scheduling could have on childcare responsibilities—a particular concern for female workers. This could cause serious repercussions if parents were required to leave children unattended, leading, in some cases, to the intervention of social services.
Not knowing how many hours would be allocated to them each week made it difficult for the workers to predict their income and thus caused difficulty in confidently planning their expenditures. This difficulty was aggravated by the fact that precarious scheduling could result in some workers facing weeks in which they worked a very low number of hours. During such periods, the financial hardship encountered could be extreme, requiring workers to resort to extraordinary measures such as using food banks, taking on debt, lapsing on rent and utility bill payments, and even losing one’s home and having to move in with relatives. Rachel explained how manager-controlled flexible scheduling caused income insecurity among hourly workers: “You are just wondering like, ‘Oh my God, are they going to change my hours, are they going to cut my hours next week, am I going to have enough money for my rent next week?’ ”
Kim (a worker) made clear that it was not just the unpredictability of hours but also the inherent instability of their income that caused workers problems: “It adds a lot of stress to it because you never know what your pay is going to look like, you know it’s a problem trying to pay stuff and your pay is never steady, you know your pay goes up and down because ConflictCo plays around with your hours; that causes a lot of stress, it’s very stressful.”
The effects of precarious scheduling were particularly pronounced at ConflictCo because the hourly rate was so low. Joe (a worker) elucidated how low pay combined with unstable hours was a source of fear: “I don’t make a lot of money and I only work thirty-four hours, twenty-four is nothing, so yeah I’m scared.”
The fact that income insecurity and working-time insecurity combined into a more general insecurity surrounding scheduling can be seen by the fact that the vast majority of workers interviewed felt that the quality of their working hours would get worse over the next twelve months. The majority also agreed or strongly agreed that they felt insecure about the future of their job. Typically, this schedule insecurity was said to have caused stress and anxiety and depressed well-being. For example, Brad explained how the fear of not being able to afford food or rent or of being unable to pay his bills led him to feel depressed: “At first [I felt] depressed because they are things I have to deal with every day. The very real concern that if my hours got cut how am I going to feed myself, how am I going to pay my bills, keep a house over my head, keep the gas in my car to get to work in the first place.”
Likewise, Akira (a former worker at ConflictCo) explained that she required therapy to deal with the stress and anxiety caused by precarious scheduling: “A whole lot of stress and anxiety … It’s sad, it’s heart breaking, I did a lot of crying, you know I have to hold back tears mostly every time I talk about it. I’ve had a lot of therapy just from working at ConflictCo, mental therapy for stress management, anxiety management, just from working there.”
Ali (a union official supporting the worker association) suggested that this stress, anxiety, and depressed well-being might manifest as psychosomatic complaints: “It’s very stressful, you know there are many employees who might never have had problems with anxiety or depression but when they start working at ConflictCo they have to start going to the doctor and get, you know, medication, or if they had these existing conditions it’s made it a lot worse, whether it is high blood pressure, so you know it’s affecting people not just mentally but physically as well.”
As at PartnershipCo, the flexible nature of scheduling resulted in workers’ schedules varying widely in both the number and timing of hours week by week. Managers at ConflictCo had near-total control over this scheduling, which had a damaging effect on workers’ work-life balance and led to workers experiencing a pervasive sense of schedule insecurity regarding future changes to their hours. As at PartnershipCo, managers not only had control over workers while they were in the workplace but also over their family and social life, as Francisco (a ConflictCo worker) explained: “If they change your time every time that you go to work, and they change your day off, that means that they own your life already because they let you work any time they want, any day they want and you know you can’t even plan for your life.”
The extension of this power beyond the realm of the workplace led another worker, Brad, to equate manager-controlled flexible scheduling to slavery: “I would compare it almost to feeling like a slave because your power to control your own life is taken from you; they are going to make you [work] whenever … they want.”
Not only did manager-controlled flexible scheduling provide managers with this discretionary power over workers’ lives, but managers could use it to punish workers if they were not flexible, productive, or obedient enough. This created fear among the workforce: if they displeased their managers, their hours would be cut or schedules altered. Akira (a former worker) elaborated this common theme: “You’re disciplined like a child; like you would punish your twelve-year-old: ‘I’m going to take your hours, I’m gonna take your days because you spoke back.’ ”
The subtlety of this manner of control proved especially useful for surreptitiously disciplining workers who joined the worker association, thus undermining the union-backed campaign to wrest a degree of control from management. Many workers at ConflictCo felt that this was a barrier to the growth of the worker association. Kim (a worker) explained why: “If I go to an event [organized by the worker association], and I’m out there and they [managers] find out, I will find out the next week over that I’ve been slashed ten hours or so and my hours would have been steady at thirty-two hours for like a couple of months, and then all of sudden an activity comes about and my hours get slashed.”
In fact, a similar experience led Becky (a former worker) to quit her job at ConflictCo, leaving her unable to claim unemployment benefits: “I was continuously being active in the worker association, and I was going to rallies and protests and in June or July 2012 there was the China Town rally, so I went to that and … two weeks later … I went to the computer to look at my schedule, and my hours had gone down from thirty-eight down to eight, and I wasn’t even scheduled for one of the weeks, and at that exact moment, my manager was on the phone to someone and saying, ‘Are you available to come for an interview at 11 A.M. tomorrow?’ So I heard that, and it was kinda a slap in the face, so I left.”
As Valentina, one of the lead union organizers supporting the worker association, explained, it was very difficult for workers, the worker association, or the union to combat this form of punishment: “It’s hard to distinguish if it is complete retaliation or if it is just what ConflictCo usually does … Their schedule is X, then they do something publicly, and their schedule changes … they are probably trying to mess with you because they know that you can’t work that shift … But that’s not something that you can necessarily prove …’cause then we’d have to make the argument that their hours have never changed before and that’s not the nature of retail.”
Moreover, dismissing someone is rigid in its immutability. Conversely, cutting or altering a worker’s schedule can easily be rescinded, making it a much more flexible and permanent means of control. This flexibility also means that the punishment can be modulated and reduced over time, unlike the binary nature of dismissal/nondismissal. Manager-controlled flexible scheduling, however, was not just a tool that managers could utilize as and when they needed in order to punish specific workers. It also constituted an active and constant “structuration”2 of the workplace environment, meaning that all workers needed to constantly strive to maintain the favor of managers. As Brad (a worker), put it, “Pretty much everyone feels that if you are on the good side of a manager they will give you more hours, give you better shifts.”
As discussed in the previous chapter, the fact that managers had the ability to cut or offer workers additional hours and set shifts meant that workers had an interest in attempting to gain favor with their manager. José, a union organizer, claimed doing so was common among the workers he spoke to: “Some workers do try and do that [gain a manager’s favor by doing extra tasks]. I spoke to someone the other day who was like: ‘When I first started I used to do a lot of extra stuff for ConflictCo and the time came for them to cut hours and I went to the manager who I’d done all this extra stuff for.’ ”
Nicola, a former assistant manager at ConflictCo, supported the workers’ view that managers at ConflictCo used their control over schedules as a way to secure high productivity: “If they are part-time and they have performance issues, I know that managers would look at giving that person less hours than a worker that performed better.”
This process of gaining favor also personalized this mechanism of control—which had important implications for the obscuring of the labor process, discussed in the next chapter.
This chapter demonstrates that, as at PartnershipCo, the operation of an internal labor market was not a significant source of consent at ConflictCo. It then shows that, despite the divergent internal states at PartnershipCo and ConflictCo, both operated high levels of manager-controlled flexible scheduling, which translated into precarious and insecure scheduling for workers. The precariousness of such scheduling in turn aided the securing of workplace control. As at PartnershipCo, a major strength of this mechanism of control for managers was its subtlety and ambiguity. However, at ConflictCo this subtlety was particularly useful for managers, as their scope for blatant despotic methods of control had been reduced by negative publicity surrounding working conditions in their stores. In particular, flexible discipline was a useful tool for undermining the worker association, as it was very difficult to prove that temporal flexibility was being used in this way. Other benefits for managers of flexible discipline were that this method of control was, by its nature, less rigid than formal and informal threats of dismissal. Punishing workers through alterations to schedules could easily be modified and rescinded simply by managers offering workers additional hours or reducing the variability of their schedule.
This chapter has also highlighted how flexible discipline operated in a similar fashion at ConflictCo and PartnershipCo. This was despite the fact that managers at ConflictCo had more traditional despotic tools at their disposal than those available to their counterparts at PartnershipCo. This similarity in the face of highly divergent industrial relations climates, employment protections, and welfare systems demonstrates that flexible discipline may operate as a mechanism of control across vastly different contexts. The control engendered by flexible scheduling is not, however, simply a disciplinary tool that managers wield as and when they need, in order to punish specific workers. It also constitutes an active and constant structuration of the workplace environment according to which all workers constantly strive to maintain the favor of managers. The following chapter moves on to consider the dynamics of the work at PartnershipCo and ConflictCo, and the implications of precarious scheduling for the obscuring of exploitation—and how this too aids control.