Work Schedule Flexibility in Hourly Jobs: Unanticipated Consequences and Promising Directions

“Researchers, policy advocates, and employers in the United States (U.S.) have intensified efforts to promote flexibility policies that are designed to provide workers greater influence over the timing and location of their work. Most flexibility initiatives have the goal of loosening up rigid job schedules, an attempt to facilitate work-life balance and level the playing field for women in male-dominated professional jobs. Yet broad segments of hourly jobs are already ‘loose,’ characterized by fluctuating rather than rigid schedules and too few rather than too many work hours. [This paper drew] on national U.S. Census data and findings from three comparative case studies of low-level hourly jobs across several industries to identify conditions of work in the U.S. that complicate the implementation of work schedule flexibility in hourly jobs. [It] began by reviewing key business and policy conditions that influence scheduling practices in low-level hourly jobs. [It] then considered realities of low-level hourly jobs that can impede the implementation of conventional forms of schedule flexibility, at times creating unintended negative consequences for workers and coworkers. [The paper] concluded by identifying private and public tools for delivering meaningful flexibility to jobs with scarce and fluctuating work hours” (p.1). (Abstractor: Author)

“Efforts to include hourly workers in the public discourse on workplace flexibility are needed and laudable. Our analyses raise concerns, however, about the extent to which conventional flexibility options serve their intended purpose when applied to jobs in which start and end times already vary and workers are more concerned about getting enough hours rather than too many. Advocates for increased workplace flexibility have begun to incorporate these cautions as they advance new directions for both policy and employer practice… Moreover, labor market trends suggest that fluctuating work hours may be expanding…and generating a growing proportion of workers in and beyond the U.S. who work part-time hours but would prefer additional hours. Specifically, recent analyses of national data suggest that one source of growing income instability in the U.S. is within-job fluctuations in earnings (Gottschalk & Moffitt, 2009). Cross-national comparisons of part-time employment reveal that as opportunities to work reduced hours have expanded in Germany, Denmark, and France, so have these countries’ rates of involuntary part-time employment (Mason & Salverda, 2009). Global labor market trends are thus magnifying the importance of expanded flexibility options that do not place workers at risk of low hours and income. The relationship between work hours and poverty in the U.S. highlight the need to pay close attention to the effects of flexibility options on hours of work (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010d). Overall, among families with at least one full-time, year-round earner (hourly or salaried), the poverty rate in 2008 was 3.5 percent… Even under a best-case scenario, however, improved work schedule flexibility in hourly jobs will not be enough to ensure that workers have the resources needed to support themselves and their families…In tandem with changes to private employer practices, public safety net policies and programs such as paid leaves and sick time still have an important role to play in delivering economic security to those laboring at the frontlines of firms” (p.32-34). (Abstractor: Author and Website Staff)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2010
• Author(s): Lambert, Susan J.; Haley-Lock, Anna; Henly, Julia R.
• Organizational Author(s): University of Chicago
• Funding Source: Funding source not identified
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies