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Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

nytimes.com

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Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#11

Post by _delirium »

koblas wrote: post #3

This is not really a technology issue, it's a non-union employee issue. As a society we're asking the government to step in and legislate to protect workers rather than fostering unions to negotiate on a case by case basis. http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/jul/23/e...

Yeah, there was recently a (rare) train strike in Sweden over something vaguely along these lines. The train company wanted to move to flex-staffing that can vary on a week-by-week or day-by-day basis based on traffic models. The proximate trigger was that they laid off 250 salaried employees and immediately re-hired them as hourly employees, but the real issue of the strike was over that kind of flex-staffing. The strike ended with a compromise proposed by a mediator that was a victory for the train companies on the main formal dispute (no limit on hourly or flex staffing), but seen as a practical win for the union (hourly workers will have to be paid a significant wage premium over the salaried equivalent, to compensate for the uncertainty/precarity of the arrangement): http://www.thelocal.se/20140618/swedens-trains-back-on-track...

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#13

Post by _delirium »

Kenji wrote: post #12

Am I the only one who thinks you shouldn't have a child if you haven't yet set up a stable environment for them? That includes sorting out your education and jobs.

Sorting it out requires predicting ~20 years of social and technology changes, which is a pretty high bar. A stable job today might not be stable in 5 years, if employment conditions change (as they seem to be changing in the case discussed here). I suspect in the medium-term future there will be very few stable jobs at all.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#14

Post by autokad »

noahbarr wrote: post #4

Additional "worker compassionate" scheduling constraints could be easily added to the optimizAtion to fix this problem. Corporations have to care about their employees. You don't hear Costco employees complaining.

Costco is a different type of business with different requirements. apples and oranges.

also, you do hear them complaining: http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/overtime/inter...

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#15

Post by swalsh »

If there is a higher demand for workers during certain hours, shouldn't the workers be paid higher for those hours?

Seems like a fair trade off? If you want ala carte hours, you should pay ala carte prices.

Only way I can think to do it though is by regulating time software... something like "if you use flexible hours, you must comply to these regulations" where in they specify custom pricing.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#16

Post by gojomo »

Minimum wages also contribute to this: when you remove flexibility from one parameter of a gigantic system in dynamic tension, it can be partially clawed back elsewhere.

So if the mix "lower wages but consistent (and often overstaffed) schedules" is prohibited by the wage law, you may instead get the mix "slightly higher wages but hours aggressively trimmed and rearranged".

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#17

Post by Iftheshoefits »

Kenji wrote: post #12

Am I the only one who thinks you shouldn't have a child if you haven't yet set up a stable environment for them? That includes sorting out your education and jobs.

You're not the only one; there are a great many people who have the same opinion. Not that you aren't entitled to your opinions, and this one in particular, but the fact is the particular opinion you've expressed is filled with assumptions and implicit assertions that aren't justified by any empirical data or analytical thought.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#18

Post by Kenji »

_delirium wrote: post #13
Kenji wrote: post #12

Am I the only one who thinks you shouldn't have a child if you haven't yet set up a stable environment for them? That includes sorting out your education and jobs.

Sorting it out requires predicting ~20 years of social and technology changes, which is a pretty high bar. A stable job today might not be stable in 5 years, if employment conditions change (as they seem to be changing in the case discussed here). I suspect in the medium-term future there will be very few stable jobs at all.

"Sorting it out requires predicting ~20 years of social and technology changes, which is a pretty high bar."

No. Finishing your degree before you have a child is not a high bar. It's common sense.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#19

Post by apalmer »

swalsh wrote: post #15

If there is a higher demand for workers during certain hours, shouldn't the workers be paid higher for those hours? Seems like a fair trade off? If you want ala carte hours, you should pay ala carte prices. Only way I can think to do it though is by regulating time software... something like "if you use flexible hours, you must comply to these regulations" where in they specify custom pricing.

This doesnt really follow. There is no incentive for the business to pay more just because.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#20

Post by bryanlarsen »

I've written simple scheduling software. The only consideration taken by this scheduling software were worker preferences: management doesn't care who covers the shifts, just that they're covered. So it took into account "fairness", day of week preferences, scheduled holidays, et cetera.

By those measures, the software does a lot better than humans. However, there's something to be said about the predictability of the old human schedules. The humans generally just figured out a 2 week schedule and repeated it; filling in holes created by scheduling conflicts with those workers they knew were usually eager to pick up more work.

IOW, you may previously have worked every 2nd Tuesday. If you couldn't work on a particular Tuesday, you just didn't work. Now you're much more likely to get a solid 2 shifts a month (presuming that's what you asked for), most will be on days you marked as preferred, some days may be on some you marked as available and none on days you marked as not available.

Now obviously I could have added a metric to guide the system towards more 'regular' schedules. But it would still compensate for those other considerations, and would still look somewhat random. It's usually pretty easy to tell the difference between a computer-generated and a human-generated schedule, and many people still prefer the human generated ones, even if it is less 'fair' by almost any measure.

Given how crazy a schedule generated solely by worker preferences is, I shudder to consider schedules driven solely by management preference...

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