Alkahest my heroes have always died at the end

January 3, 2007

another example of not getting by in America

Filed under: Social — cec @ 8:56 pm

If you’ve read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, it’ll be pretty obvious why Walmart’s continued quest for efficiency is bad for employees and workers.  The latest example?  High-tech scheduling software designed to dynamically tune employee schedules to meet real-time fluctuations in the number of customers.  The result will be low wage workers on-call to meet customer surges and the possibility of being asked to go home during lulls.  This will make paychecks even less stable.  Add to that, dynamic checks on whether an employee is reaching full-time status or overtime so that their schedule can be scaled back, and you have the makings of an increasingly unfair workplace – regardless of value of the minimum wage.

2 Comments

  1. To be upfront, I happen to be associated with Asgard Systems, who are publishers of employee scheduling software. We are not the suppliers of Wal-Mart’s employee scheduling software and are unaware of what product they are using.

    Even if Wal-Mart (or any employer) used a pencil and paper to produce their employee schedules, they might still implement policies and procedures that could be viewed as promoting their own corporate interests. The promotional literature that we provide regarding our product, does directly address organizational scheduling needs. However, such needs include taking the employees personal life into perspective as well. An example is the priority given to personal conflicting events such as night school, taking care of sick parents, weddings etc. Such issues are promoted at our website (www.asgardsystems.com), in our free trial version and our instructional movies. I am very pleased to say that, most employers express the need of having to contend with the humanistic aspects of managing an organization. Their needs dictate our products design. In the end it really is about how management elects to use any tool that counts.

    Comment by mike — March 2, 2007 @ 1:15 pm

  2. Mike,

    I appreciate where you are coming from on this. In my “real” life, I’m a technologist and I do agree that any technology is just a tool which magnifies the capabilities of those wielding it. My biggest concern is not the tool per se, but the intention of those using it – in this case Walmart, which does not have the best track record for being employee-friendly.

    It’s good to hear that the software can be used to manage the human needs of employees, but again, how it will be used is the issue. The central aspect of the problem is that Walmart has all of the leverage in working with its employees and this tool only increases that leverage. However, you can’t blame the tool for how it is used.

    Comment by cec — March 2, 2007 @ 1:50 pm

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