scheduling

The public health literature is pretty clear when it comes to income status and poverty and their profound effects on health, disability, disease and life expectancy. But what about income inequality? Does a rising gap in wealth and resource distribution affect people’s health too? In a commentary published last week in the American Journal of Public Health, two researchers posit that growing income inequality is a contributing factor to poorer health among American workers. In “Squeezing Blood from a Stone: How Income Inequality Affects the Health of the American Workforce,” authors Jessica…

The week of midterm exams is stressful for any college student. For San Francisco State student Michelle Flores, it was another stress-filled example of the unfair conditions she and millions of other retail workers face on a regular basis. Flores, a 20-year-old labor studies and public policy undergrad, is a cashier at a national grocery store chain and usually works a 24-hour week, though she’d like to work more. Just before midterms, she found out her supervisor expected her to work 30 hours the same week as her exams — and he gave her just two days notice. “I said I'd work them,” she said…

With much of the country still suffering the effects of the last recession, many hourly workers are trying to scrape by with part-time jobs that don’t give them as many hours as they’d like. Worse, their schedules are often unpredictable, with little advance notice -- and workers may scramble to coordinate childcare and transportation, only to arrive at their jobs and learn their shifts have been canceled. Businesses may lower their costs by rearranging schedules at the last minute or sending workers home in response to fluctuating numbers of customers, but they do so at the expense of…