Belabored Podcast #47: Retail Hours, Wholesale Injustice

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Check out the full Belabored archive here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. Perhaps nothing demonstrates the precarity that low-wage workers experience more than the irregular work schedule. In many service jobs, workers might know what they will be paid per hour when they’re hired, but never know how many hours they will be working each week. The lack of stable hours means not just a wildly unstable income, but often, no ability to manage the time you spend with family or at school. This week on Belabored, we examine the impact of unfair scheduling on the lives of retail workers. We speak to activists with the Retail Action Project and Women Employed, who are pushing for policy changes to give workers fair schedules and just hours.  We also discuss the Supreme Court drama over employer-sponsored health insurance and reproductive rights; the idea of "the end of jobs" in the context of low-wage workers’ struggles; labor protections for unpaid interns; and Wall Street’s attack on Los Angeles. Plus, recommended reading on the tyranny of the gig economy and the value of the welfare state.  News: Ruling Could Have Reach Beyond Issue of Contraception Why are our employers making our health insurance choices in the first place? Sarah: Port Truckers Win/The End of Jobs? The Fight to Protect Unpaid Interns Against Sexual Harassment NY Times Raises Intern Pay To Minimum Wage No Small Fees: LA Spends More on Wall Street than Our Streets New Report Reveals How Wall Street Impoverishes Los Angeles Conversation with Sonsira Espinal, Onieka O’Kieffe, and Sasha Hammad of Retail Action Project, and Christina Warden of Women Employed Michelle: The Tyranny of the On-Call Schedule: Hourly Injustice in Retail Labor Retail Action Project Women Employed Argh, I Wish I’d Written That! Sarah: Sarah Kessler, "Pixel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in the Gig Economy," Fast Company Michelle: Mike Konczal, "The Conservative Myth of a Social Safety Net Built on Charity," The Atlantic/Democracy The post Belabored Podcast #47: Retail Hours, Wholesale Injustice appeared first on Dissent Magazine.