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Improving Work-Life Fit in Hourly Jobs
The Center for WorkLife Law
WorkLife Law's mandate from the Kellogg
Foundation was to examine workplace flexibility
in low-wage jobs. After a review of the relevant
literatures, it became clear that to do so effectively
required expanding the report to include work-life
fit in all hourly jobs. The reason is that workplace
flexibility for low-wage workers is impeded by two
separate types of problems that affect most hourly
workers regardless of their wage levels: schedule
rigidity and schedule instability.
Low-wage jobs share with most hourly jobs one type
of problem: that of schedule rigidity. Hourly jobs
are rigid and highly supervised, and most lack the
kinds of flexibility professionals take for granted.
Unlike professionals, who often have considerable
flexibility in their starting and stopping times, and
the ability to leave work when family needs arise,
hourly workers typically punch in and out. Being a
few minutes late, or having to leave abruptly due to
a family crisis, can lead to discipline or discharge.
Quite a different type of problem arises in low-
wage jobs in what this report calls the "just-in-time
sector." Jobs in this sector have extremely unstable
schedules that change from day to day and/or week
to week. Workers in these types of jobs not only
have great difficulty planning for regular child and/
or elder care needs, but also have trouble getting
enough hours to support their families.
No reliable estimates exist of how large the just-
in-time sector is because existing data collection
methods tend to underestimate the instability in
hours worked. (Lambert 2008) Yet existing data
suggest that not all low-wage workers have just-in-
time jobs. Depending on the way questions about
work schedules are worded, estimates range from
roughly two-thirds (62%) of low-wage jobs having
regular daytime hours (and 25% with schedules
that are rotating, split shift, variable on-call, or
other (Swanberg 2008)) to fully two-fifths of all
American workers working the majority of their
hours outside of daytime, weekday hours. (Presser
2003) Evidence suggests that the use of just-in-time
scheduling practices is likely to vary by job and
industry. While just-in-time scheduling is extremely
common in retail and certain other industries, a
study of hospital workers found that more than
90% of food service workers and 60% of nursing
assistants had full-time schedules; even so, the
timing of their hours may vary from week to week.
(Applebaum, Berg, Frost & Preuss 2003)
To improve work-life fit in low-wage jobs requires
both effective practices to address problems presented
by just-in-time scheduling and a quite different
set of practices to address the workplace rigidity
faced by hourly workers more generally. Only by
combining effective practices designed to increase
schedule stability in the just-in-time sector, with
effective practice designed to increase flexibility
in hourly jobs more generally, can the mismatch
between today's workplace and today's workforce
be remedied.
Who holds low-wage jobs?
Between one-quarter and one-third of Americans
hold low-wage jobs, depending on how low-wage is
defined. (Swanberg 2009) According to one study,
43% of hourly jobs pay low wages. (Swanberg
2008) Low-wage workers are more likely to be
employed by small businesses, and more likely to
work in service industries, than are other workers.
(Acs & Nichols 2007) Retail sales, janitorial and
cleaning, care provision, and restaurant work are the
chief low-wage occupations. (Boushey, Fremstad,
i. HOW DO LOW-WaGE JOBS Fit
iNtO tHE LarGEr uNivErSE OF
HOurLy JOBS?