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Next goal for Walmart workers: More hours

For Anthony Rodriguez, every diaper for his 2-year-old son means less money to put food on the table…

For Anthony Rodriguez, every diaper for his 2-year-old son means less money to put food on the table, or to fill up his car at the gas station. His fiancée, Melinda Prothero, tries to make each diaper last longer, but there’s a limit to that, he says.

Mr. Rodriguez, 26, makes those trade-offs even though he already receives above-minimum wages at Walmart, and will make at least $10 an hour next year, part of a move by Walmart to raise wages for hundreds of thousands of workers.

“It’s not going to help us. We need the hours,” said Mr. Rodriguez, a member of the union-supported workers’ group, Our Walmart.

He says he constantly begs his managers for full-time work at the bustling Walmart superstore in Rosemead, Calif. He generally works around 28 hours a week, but can be assigned as few as 18.

“I work as hard as I can, and when they offer me hours, I stay,” he said. “But when the time comes, and I beg them for hours because I’m not going to afford rent, they don’t want to help me.”

The move to increase hourly wages by Walmart, which employs 1.3 million workers as the country’s largest private sector employer, is sending ripples through the retail industry. On Wednesday, the TJX Companies, which runs the discount chain T. J. Maxx, said it would follow suit, raising the pay of its hourly wage workers to at least $9 later this year, and to $10 next year.

With some progress on the hourly wage front, labor activists are highlighting another longstanding demand: more hours — and more consistent hours — for hourly-wage workers like Mr. Rodriguez, something they say will make as much a difference to workers’ pocketbooks as an increase in wages.

Walmart says about half of its hourly-wage workers work part time, and that percentage can be even higher at other retailers. Stores change many of their workers’ schedules week to week. And while many people prefer to work part time — for instance, college students eager for extra spending money — the number of part-timers who would prefer to work full time is growing, especially in the retailing and hospitality industries.

In 2007, about 685,000 of a total of 19.2 million workers in the retail sector were involuntarily employed part time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By 2014, the number of involuntary part-time retail workers had more than doubled, to 1.4 million, even as the total number of retail workers declined to 18.9 million.

Wages are just the first step in getting Walmart on the road toward being the type of employer that treats its employees with respect, and part of that is to set some standards around hours and work schedules,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorOfChange, an online civil rights organization that has campaigned for Walmart to raise wages and give workers better hours.

“It’s about creating an environment where employees are not just at the whim of Walmart,” he said.

At the heart of demands for higher wages and better hours, experts say, is the dwindling number of middle-class jobs. More primary wage earners who in the past may have held stable blue-collar jobs in manufacturing are now relying on low-wage jobs at Walmart or other discount retailers to support their families.

Mr. Rodriguez, who works at Walmart assembling bikes and other products, supports his fiancée on an income that can be as little as $900 a month. After spending about $550 on rent, $65 on gas for his car, as well as paying for food, diapers, cellphone costs and insurance, he can rarely afford new clothes or recreation, and when hours are especially scarce, he borrows money from his sister. He is looking for a second job to supplement his income, most likely a graveyard shift as a security guard. He is already $4,000 in debt.

“Walmart always provided jobs at the margins of the labor force — to people who were just re-entering the labor force after many years, for example, or supplementing a spouse’s income,” said Gary N Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University.

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First published on: 27-02-2015 at 00:03 IST
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