Clocking in for 10 hours one week and 30 the next might sound flexible, but two writers in the New York Times argue it's become a quiet crisis—and they want federal law to step in. Labor lawyer Matt Bruenig and novelist Adelle Waldman, who worked in a big-box store for research on a book, say more than 6.7 million Americans are stuck in part-time jobs because they can't get the hours they want, thanks largely to "just-in-time" scheduling that lets major employers keep most workers part time, then call them in only when demand spikes. This results, they write, in wildly unstable paychecks that make it harder to rent an apartment, get a car loan, or even juggle a second job.
It amounts to "a transfer of risk from business owners and corporate shareholders to the nation's lowest-paid workers," write Bruenig and Waldman, who note that rising minimum hourly wages don't properly address the problem. Their fix: a new legal right to full-time work. Under their proposal, employees at companies with more than 50 full-time-equivalent workers could request full-time hours after three months, and employers would have to say yes unless they could show an "undue burden." Bruenig and Waldman frame it as updating New Deal-era labor protections for an age when underwork, not overwork, is the bigger threat. For their full argument, including why companies should be on board, read the piece at the Times.
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