The 24-hour economy is wreaking havoc on workers' lives and families, says Anna Gassman-Pines. Gassman-Pines is an assistant professor of public policy, psychology and neuroscience at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy and a faculty fellow with the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy.
Transcript:
From Duke University, this is "Glad You Asked," where we consider the question, “What should we be talking about this election season?”
"My name is Anna Gassman-Pines. I’m assistant professor of public policy and psychology and neuroscience, and a faculty affiliate of the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy.
"I think we should be talking about low-wage workers in the United States. In particular, low-wage workers' scheduling – what’s reasonable to expect and what we can do to help low-wage workers have more predictable schedules, schedules that are more reasonable for their lives that are going to help them advance in the workplace and also be able to take care of their kids.
"Employers are increasingly able to use sophisticated software to place workers in schedules at all different times of day. So we know with the 24/7 economy, and people wanting to be able to go get a cup of coffee at any time of the day, that companies are filling in their schedules in ways that are not predictable for the workers themselves.
"They often don’t have a lot of advanced notice. They often are highly variable from week to week, and they can include things like closing out a restaurant or coffee shop at the end of the day and having to be in the very next morning to open very early, and these are just not reasonable demands to be making of these workers, many of whom have children.
"And there’s a lot of uncertainty for these workers about what they’re actually going to earn in any given week. If they are expecting to work a six-hour shift, and they get sent home three hours into that shift, that’s three hours less pay than they were expecting to make that week. And I think that we can have policy solutions that prevent that from happening."
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