CPD IN THE NEWS

URBAN Outfitters, you're breaking my heart.

I'd loved you since I discovered your lone West Philly shop when I was in college. You'd just changed your name from the Free People Store, and your countercultural merchandise spoke to my giddy dreams of a boho life. I was smitten the day I bought an Indian-print cotton bedspread from you to sew into curtains for my first-ever single-girl apartment.

"Where'd you get them?" friends would ask, eyeing my handiwork.

"Urban," I'd say, knowing the word had become code for "I may be broke, but at least I'm hip."

 

MORE COVERAGE

Urban Outfitters company asks employees to work for free

God, I was young.

Since then, you've become more successful than I have, morphing into a $1 billion global behemoth that also encompasses the brands Free People, Anthropologie, Bhldn and Terrain. Your clothes still skew to the young demographic I used to belong to, so I'd taken to scanning your racks for Christmas gifts for my clothes-horse teenager.

She got to wear your cute stuff and I got to maintain a touchstone relationship with a company that had put down roots in Philly, as I had, and never left. It made me happy.

Sure, your price tags indicated you'd gotten a tad full of yourself ($89 for a cotton/poly romper? Really?). And you'd stumbled embarrassingly in attempts to be edgy (a shirt evocative of the one the Nazis made gay concentration-camp prisoners wear? What were you thinking?).

Still, Urban, I'd cut you slack the way family cuts slack to kin. You've remained a player in a city that has lost too many homegrown businesses to either bankruptcy or foreign soil. That counts for a lot in my book.

You may not be perfect, I'd always told myself, but you're ours.

But Urban - oh, Urban. I've been learning about the way you treat your part-time employees, the young, mostly female staff who work in your retail stores. And I'm ashamed of you.

For years, you've subjected them to an enslaving scheduling system that betrays your "free people" roots. Basically, you give them their schedule only a few days in advance, with some shifts designated as "on call." But they don't know, until three hours before the shift is to begin, whether you need them to work that shift or not. If not, they don't get paid.

Yet they're required to hold that time for you, in case you do.

"On calls are considered scheduled shifts, and the same attendance policy applies," your employee handbook says.

All I can ask, Urban, is: What the hell? But your PR flacks didn't respond to my questions.

The use of "on-call" staffing is obviously necessary in medical and first-responder fields, where lives depend on workers being available when needed. Reasonable people know it's part of the gig. But using the same scheduling to ensure that a billion-dollar retailer doesn't "waste" money on excess workers during a slow day at the shop?

C'mon, Urban. It's horrible.

The unpredictability means employees can't schedule classes, if they're in school. Or go to a second job, so they can cobble together a full-time salary. Or reliably arrange child care or pay their bills, since their cost to do both remains fixed even though their working hours don't.

Their only compensation, if I read the handbook correctly, is that they get to keep their jobs so you can continue to exploit their need to make a living.

"It's pretty messed up," one of your employees told me when I asked her about the policy. I won't say which of your 179 U.S. stores employs her, since she needs her crappy job. She's toiling through college and doesn't know, week to week, what her paycheck will be. "It's hard to plan," she said.

She could get a job at a different store, but it seems you're not the only retail chain doing this.

Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, and L Brand Inc.'s Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works are some of the other billion-dollar corporations whose on-call scheduling have wreaked havoc on their workers. The practice began about 10 years ago, says Carrie Gleason, as globalization increased retail competition and companies needed new ways to shave expenses.

"They started incorporating new technology into scheduling that used software algorithms" to track store traffic, the time of year, even weather patterns, says Gleason, director of the fair-work-week initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy.

But the predictions aren't perfect, so on-call staffing provides wiggle room to keep labor costs down. Retailers also tie store managers' bonuses to how low they keep labor costs.

How can you stand being part of this, Urban?

In April, New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called companies like you on the carpet, following his investigation into the legality of on-call staffing at 13 retailers whose New York stores employ thousands of low-wage Americans.

As a result, big changes have happened.

Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works stopped the practice nationwide. Abercrombie and Gap say that nationally they, too, are phasing out on-call shifts.

But you, Urban, are dragging your feet. You'll stop the practice in New York, you announced this month, but everywhere else it'll be exploitation as usual.

Which means you're doing the right thing in New York only because New York law requires you to. As for everywhere else, it's human decency be damned.

"If Urban found a business model to let them stop on-call shifts in New York, they ought to be able to find a business model that will let them stop the shifts everywhere else," says Lance Haver, formerly the city's consumer advocate and now director of civic engagement for City Council.

"If they don't, then consumers can say we're not going to shop at their stores until they change their practice. We can refuse to support a store that abuses the people who wait on us."

Haver also thinks the only way to assure that businesses like you, Urban, treat employees better is for your workers to organize.

"People say there's no longer a reason for people to join unions," he says, "but that's because they don't know about these disgusting practices."

Lest you think, Urban, that all your employees are miffed with you, that's not the case. I spoke with one employee, a fan, who asked not to be named because she's hoping to work her way into your corporate headquarters at the Navy Yard. She sees her on-call schedule as a necessary evil, given the vagaries of the retail market.

"The company has to do right by its shareholders," she told me. "I think they're stuck between a rock and a hard place."

Except that your company founder and CEO, former hippie and current billionaire Richard Hayne, owns most of your stock.

He has the clout to end on-call staffing. That's not being between a rock and a hard place. It's holding the power position.

Please, Urban, return to your roots and free your people. And please start in Philly.

Because family comes first.

Source: Philly.com

WELL, THAT was fast!

Yesterday I wrote about an "on-call" scheduling practice at Urban Outfitters that's unbelievably abusive to its lowest-wage workers. Within hours of the column hitting print, Urban announced it was killing the practice for good.

Coincidence? You decide.

Here's yesterday's statement from the Philly-based billion-dollar retailer, which also owns the brands Anthropologie, Free People, Terrain and Bhldn.

"We are always looking for ways to improve, and as such we have decided to end on-call scheduling for all [Urban] brand associates throughout North America. We look forward to continuing to find ways to better fulfill our mission of providing fashion and lifestyle essentials to our dedicated customers."

This is amazing news for employees at Urban's 518 North American stores.

For years, they'd been receiving their work schedules only a few days in advance, with some shifts designated as "on call." But they wouldn't be told, until three hours before the shift was to begin, whether they'd actually be needed to work. If they weren't, they wouldn't be paid, even though they'd been required to hold that time for the company.

The unpredictability had wreaked havoc on workers, who are mostly young and female.

They were unable to schedule classes if they were in school. Or to schedule hours at a second job if they needed a full-time income. Or to reliably arrange day care or pay their bills, since their cost to do both was fixed even though their working hours weren't.

What a crappy way to treat members of the demographic that Urban targets so heavily.

"It's pretty messed up," one worker, a college student, told me. She was paying her way through school, but Urban's scheduling meant she couldn't schedule other work to help pay tuition. "It's hard to plan."

Readers reacted with disgust to the column.

"Retail needs to be called on the carpet!" wrote emailer rgrassia. "We need more people with the ability to do something to pressure these companies to change the ways they conduct themselves."

Reader Madeleine Pierucci excoriated Urban for "co-opting the '60s struggles and playing it to the detriment of its 2015 workers. Not cool." She also planned to picket Urban's Center City store next week.

And a furious churchgoer named Samantha C. vowed to spread the word throughout the National Baptist Convention to have its 100,000 church members boycott Urban's stores in protest.

"It's time for slavery to stop," she declared.

Urban's change of heart is a testament to the power of the press, says Carrie Gleason. She's director of the fair-workweek initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy and has been working for a very long time to get employers to end on-call staffing.

"The media has helped shift the public opinion in terms of what is acceptable around employers' expectations of their employees' time," she told me. "I think Urban's announcement is a direct response to the fact that the public is now holding the whole retail industry to higher standards."

I'd like to take credit for Urban's reversal, but the truth is, another media outlet has been hammering at on-call scheduling by retailers - and not just Urban - for a while now.

The online news site BuzzFeed has chronicled the issue so doggedly that the New York state attorney general in April called companies on the carpet for the practice, following his investigation into the legality of on-call staffing at 13 retailers whose New York stores employ thousands of low-wage workers.

As a result, huge chains like Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie and Gap announced plans to discontinue the practice not just in New York but nationally, improving hundreds of thousands of workers' lives.

Urban, though, had said it would discontinue the practice only in New York. Everywhere else, it would be exploitation as usual.

It turned my stomach that Philly-based Urban - a company that so many of us grew up with and feel affinity for - would treat its workers so shabbily. And I said as much in my column, which we - ahem - pushed on the Daily News front page and on Philly.com.

If that helped nudge Urban into doing the decent thing, then yesterday was a good day.

Not just for Urban's workers. But for Urban's shareholders:

As news hit that Urban would end its on-call scheduling, CNBC reported, the company's stock rallied 4.68 percent.

You're welcome, Urban.

And thank you.

Source: Philly.com

A majority of House Democrats and eleven Democratic senators sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Thursday, urging the Fed to improve the diversity of its top officials and increase the representation of consumer and labor groups in its ranks.

The letter, spearheaded by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the Senate and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) in the House, argues that a lack of diversity of all kinds at the Federal Reserve undermines the central bank’s ability to represent the public.

The Fed’s control over monetary policy, the letter notes, gives it far-reaching influence over the economy. When the central bank decides to raise interest rates, it increases borrowing costs, putting downward pressure on job creation in order to keep inflation in check.

A Fed with fewer black and female decision-makers might be less attuned to the ways in which modest changes in the job market disproportionately affect African-Americans and women, both of whom suffer from employment discrimination.

“When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected,” the letter states.

Boasting the signatures of 116 House Democrats, including all of the Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus, the letter does not lack for evidence with which to critique the central bank.

Eighty-three percent of the board members of the regional Federal Reserve banks are white, and almost three-quarters of them are men, according to a Center for Popular Democracy study cited in the letter.

Just 11 percent of those board members represent consumer and community groups or labor organizations, the study states, while 39 percent come from the financial industry and 47 percent from other major business sectors.

When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected.

Warren-Conyers letter to Janet Yellen

The congressional Democrats praised Yellen in the letter for prioritizing full employment since she has taken the helm in 2014. Yellen has presided over just one increase in the Fed’s benchmark rate in December, when the Fed raised it to a range of 0.25 to 0.5 percent from the near-zero level, where it had been since the 2008 financial crisis.

The letter also credits Yellen for promising to “consider” African-American candidates for open regional Fed president positions during her congressional testimony in February, and expressing “concern” that there has never been a black president of a regional Federal Reserve bank.

But just days after Yellen’s testimony, the Democrats note, the Fed announced it had approved the re-appointment of 10 regional Fed presidents, all of whom are white and eight of whom are men.

“Despite the importance of this decision, there appears to have been no public consultation, and limited transparency regarding the metrics and criteria used to evaluate the presidents’ performance, or in the decision to reappoint them,” the letter alleges.

Warren and Conyers’ letter is part of a broader push by progressive members of Congress, along with national activist groups and like-minded economists, to make Federal Reserve monetary policy a key component of the progressive agenda. They argue that the outsize influence of inflation-wary financial professionals on the central bank, plus sustained pressure from ideological conservatives in Congress, mean it’s time for liberals to be more vocal about their views.

The Fed Up coalition, an alliance of progressive groups headed by the Center for Popular Democracy, has led these efforts, which include a reform plan released in April that would transform the Fed into a wholly public entity, among other changes. (The 12 regional Fed banks are currently owned by private financial institutions.)

Fed Up said activists affiliated with its member groups made calls to members of Congress to encourage them to sign the letter.

Democratic hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among the lawmakers who did so. Sanders also praised Fed Up’s April reform plan and released detailed proposals of his own for the central bank in December.

Fellow Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign implied that Clinton agreed with the letter’s key demands.

“Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole as well as that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue,” Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said in a statement. “Secretary Clinton will also defend the Fed’s so-called dual mandate — the legal requirement that it focus on full employment as well as inflation — and will appoint Fed governors who share this commitment and who will carry out unwavering oversight of the financial industry.”

The remarks appear to be the most explicit comments to date by either Clinton or her campaign on the Democratic presidential front-runner’s vision for the Fed and the types of Fed officials she would appoint as president.

Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump’s presidential campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

Trump told CNBC last week that he would likely replace Yellen, who is the first female chair of the central bank, once her term ends in 2018. In the same interview, he said he supports low interest rates, a policy Yellen promoted that might be undone by a more conservative Fed chair.

Trump’s latest comments suggest a departure from claims he made in August, when he said the low rates were feeding a financial asset bubble.

By Daniel Marans

Source

The American labor movement, over the past four decades, has had two golden opportunities to shift the balance of power between workers and bosses — first in 1978, with unified Democratic control of Washington, and again in 2009. Both times, the unions came close and fell short, leading, in no small part, to the precarious situation labor finds itself in today.

Read the full article here.