In recent months, a number of big, bold proposals have been advanced to relieve economic pressure on the poor, including a federal job guarantee, a universal basic income and single-payer health care. But a lot of more modest but still important ideas are being overlooked. One of these is the idea of stable work scheduling.
Over the years, many employers, especially retailers, have moved away from reliable, fixed schedules where workers have the same hours every week. The initial reason they did this was to meet demand — when there are lots of customers in a store, you need lots of workers to serve them, but when the store is almost empty, paying a lot of staff to stand around simply hurts the bottom line.
