Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

Several days ago I wrote a post on the havoc “flexible scheduling” wreaks on the lives of parents of school children and yesterday’s Atlantic blog by Gillian White featured an article on the same topic. The article offered a good explanation of how this scheduling strategy, which affects 1/6 of the workforce, plays out:

For Americans who work traditional nine-to-five jobs, the life of a worker with a constantly-changing shift schedule can be difficult to fathom. Employees can wind up spending time, and money, commuting to their job, only to be told to leave early, or that they’re not needed at all that day. A sudden call to work can mean scrambling for child care, or turning down much-needed hours. And a constantly shifting schedule can lead to uneven earnings, with income spiking in some months and plummeting in others, making it incredibly difficult to budget. For students using part-time jobs to make ends meet, schedule changes can mean making a choice between attending class and earning enough money to pay tuition. For workers with kids, it can mean a constant struggle to find and afford child care. The problem is bigger than mere inconvenience.

As if research were needed to prove it, the Atlantic cites studies that link this kind of just-in-time scheduling to “…lower levels of job satisfaction… greater levels of work-family conflict… diminished cognition and physical health…and, decreases in their ability to reason, think, and recall information.” As noted in my earlier post, when I worked part time as a grocery store cashier I was in a unionized store. While I did not appreciate it at the time, I now realize that one of the reasons I was able to schedule time-off a week in advance and trade-off with colleagues on an ad hoc basis was because of the contract the provided these rights. The loss of worker’s bargaining power has resulted in corporations being able to schedule full and part-time workers on an at-will basis making it impossible for their employees to make even weekly plans for their families. As White understates in the paragraph above: “The problem is bigger than mere inconvenience.” The problem undercuts parent involvement in the lives of children and consequently makes it more difficult for their children to have an equal opportunity for success in school.