Low-Wage Workers

Low-wage workers face a number of different scheduling challenges that flexible work arrangements can help address.

In addition to low-wages, many of these workers have few opportunities for meaningful input into the hours that they work. Many work unpredictable schedules, getting notice of their weekly schedule only a few days in advance of the workweek. And many have unstable schedules in which the amount of hours they work varies from week to week or month to month. Lack of meaningful input into work schedules and unpredictable and unstable work schedules can have a number of serious consequences for workers – including unstable child care, difficulty accessing job training and work supports, transportation problems, inability to hold down a second job, lost wages, and job loss.

Workplace flexibility and specifically Flexible Work Arrangements – including both employee input into scheduling and more predictable and stable work schedules – are an important part of the solution to these problems for low-wage workers.

Workplace Flexibility 2010 Resources:

• Lower-Wage Workers and Flexible Work Arrangements
• Flexible Work Arrangements: Improving Job Quality and Workforce Stability for Low-Wage Workers and their Employers
• Selected Resources on Flexible Work Arrangements for Lower-Wage Workers
• Workplace Flexibility 2010 Briefing - Flexible Work Arrangments and Low-Wage Work
• Powerpoint Presentation: Low Wage Work and Flexible Work Arrangements

Related Resources:

• Corporate Voices for Working Families - Workplace Flexibility for Lower Wage Workers
• Families and Work Institute
• National Employment Law Project
• Center for Law and Social Policy - Getting Punched: The Job and Family Clock
• Center for Law and Social Policy - Opportunity at Work: Improving Job Quality
• Center for Law and Social Policy - Scheduling Hourly Workers in A Just in Time World: Can Employees and Employers Sync the Clock? (Audio Conference Transcript)
• World at Work - Flexible Work Arrangements for Non-Exempt Employees
• Kossek and Hammer - Family Supportive Supervisory Behaviors Intervention Study
• The Citisales Study: Jobs that Work
• Workplace Conditions and the Lives of Hourly Workers and Their Families
• Making a Difference for Hourly Employees