GB590 Unit 5 Workplace Ethics Analysis Example

On Call and Unpaid: A Unit 5 Workplace Ethics Analysis of Scheduling at a Regional Retail Chain

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Purdue University Global

GB590: Ethics in Business and Society

Unit 5 Workplace Ethics Analysis

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[Date]

The chain, its staff and every figure are composite and illustrative; the laws, studies and sources cited are real.

The Practice as It Runs

The chain employs about 2,300 hourly associates, most part-time, in stores across four Midwestern states and in Chicago. Scheduling software forecasts traffic from past sales and weather and produces schedules each Thursday for the week starting Sunday, so associates typically get three days' notice. About 18 percent of scheduled hours are on-call shifts: the associate must keep the time free and call the store about two hours before the shift to learn whether to come in. About 40 percent of on-call shifts are canceled, and canceled shifts are unpaid. The software also schedules about one associate in six for at least one "clopening" a month, closing the store at 10 p.m. and opening it at 7 a.m. the next day. Annual turnover among hourly associates runs about 82 percent.

What the Law Says

In most of the states where the chain operates, these practices are lawful. Federal law does not require advance notice of schedules or pay for canceled shifts. Several jurisdictions have changed that. Oregon, Seattle, New York City, Chicago and a few other cities require large retailers to post schedules about two weeks ahead, pay a premium when they change schedules on short notice, and in some cases allow workers to decline shifts that begin soon after a closing shift. The chain's Chicago stores are therefore already subject to stricter rules than its other stores. The ethical question is whether practices that are lawful elsewhere are justified.

Part One: On-Call Shifts

An unpaid on-call shift asks associates to give the employer their time without paying for it. The associate cannot take another job, arrange child care with confidence or plan a class for those hours, yet earns nothing if the shift is canceled. Bowie (1998) argued from Kant's principle of respect for persons that employers should not treat workers merely as a means, and that meaningful work includes some control over one's own life. An on-call shift transfers the cost of uncertain demand from the company, which can bear it, to the associate, who often cannot. The chain's forecasting software could reduce that uncertainty but is instead used to schedule labor as close to demand as possible.

Of the three parts, this one is hardest to justify. The company gains flexibility worth something, but it gains it by claiming time it does not pay for. The usual defense is that associates accept on-call shifts when they take the job, so the arrangement is consensual. That defense is weak here. Most associates are part-time workers in towns with few comparable employers, the on-call policy is not described in job postings, and refusing on-call shifts reduces an associate's chance of being scheduled for regular hours. Consent given under those conditions does little to justify the practice.

Part Two: Short Notice

Three days' notice is lawful but hard to live with. Schneider and Harknett (2019), surveying tens of thousands of service-sector workers, linked schedules that shift without warning to worse sleep, more distress and lower happiness, and the link held up even after accounting for wages. Short notice also falls hardest on associates with children or second jobs, who are disproportionately the chain's longest-serving part-timers.

Short notice has a partial justification. Retail demand does change, and a schedule fixed two weeks ahead will sometimes be wrong. But the chain already forecasts demand two weeks out for its inventory orders, so the choice to schedule labor on three days' notice reflects cost control more than uncertainty.

Part Three: Clopenings

A clopening leaves an associate with about seven hours between shifts after travel time is counted. It is the easiest of the three practices to justify on operational grounds, since a closing associate knows the store's condition, but the hardest to justify on safety and well-being grounds, because it predictably cuts sleep. Fixing it costs little: a rule requiring ten hours between shifts would affect only about 380 associates a month.

An unpaid on-call shift is a request for the associate's time with no promise to pay for it.

What the Chain's Own Interests Suggest

The analysis does not rest only on duties to workers. Kesavan et al. (2022) report a field experiment at a large apparel retailer in which stores that adopted more stable and predictable scheduling saw higher sales and labor productivity than comparison stores, apparently because experienced associates were more often present when customers needed them. The chain's 82 percent turnover suggests the same mechanism could work in its favor. At an estimated replacement cost of about $1,800 per associate, reducing turnover to 70 percent would save roughly $500,000 a year.

Who Bears the Cost Today

It helps to see where the cost of demand uncertainty falls under the current practice. When traffic is lower than forecast, the chain cancels on-call shifts and saves the wages. When traffic is higher, it calls in associates at short notice and pays regular wages. In both cases the associate absorbs the uncertainty: unpaid time held free in the first case, disrupted plans in the second. The chain's managers, by contrast, are evaluated on labor cost as a share of sales, so the practice rewards them for pushing uncertainty onto associates. Any lasting change will need a different measure for store managers, such as labor cost combined with turnover and customer satisfaction, so that the recommendation is not undone by the incentive that produced the current practice.

Recommendation

The chain should end unpaid on-call shifts, replacing them with a voluntary flex pool in which associates who want extra hours sign up for short-notice shifts at a premium of $2 an hour. It should post schedules fourteen days ahead in every store, as it already must in Chicago, and pay two hours' wages when it cancels a shift with less than 24 hours' notice. And it should require at least ten hours between shifts unless an associate requests otherwise.

Finance staff put the added labor cost of these changes near $1.1 million annually. Against that, reduced turnover could save about $500,000, and higher sales from better-staffed stores could offset more. Even if the full cost is not recovered, the recommendation holds, because the current practice asks associates to absorb a cost the company is better placed to carry.

References

Bowie, N. E. (1998). A Kantian theory of meaningful work. Journal of Business Ethics, 17(9/10), 1083-1092. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006023500585

Kesavan, S., Lambert, S. J., Williams, J. C., & Pendem, P. K. (2022). Doing well by doing good: Improving retail store performance with responsible scheduling practices at the Gap, Inc. Management Science, 68(11), 7818-7836. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4291

Schneider, D., & Harknett, K. (2019). Consequences of routine work-schedule instability for worker health and well-being. American Sociological Review, 84(1), 82-114. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418823184