Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has completed the rollout of a program that allows employees to go on the company’s employee website and sign up for open shifts as they become available.
The program began testing at a Supercenter in Fort Smith and at a store in Denver a year ago and was instituted in one third of the retailer’s 4,000 U.S. stores this week.
Wal-Mart employees have been lobbying for more hours for at least two years. It’s also been a talking point for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union supported OUR Walmart - or Organization United for Respect at Wal-Mart. Members and supporters have held rallies and petition drives across the country, calling for an end to retaliation against employees who protest Wal-Mart’s labor practices, for the retailer to publicly commit to paying employees a minimum of $25,000 a year, and for the company to provide more full time work.
In January 2013, Bill Simon, president and chief executive officer of Wal-Mart U.S., told a gathering of National Retail Federation members that the company’s pay and benefits were better than the majority of retailers and that Wal-Martwas working to clarify its offerings.
“As part of that effort, we’ll make sure part-time associates have full visibility into full-time job openings in their stores and nearby stores - and that they always have the first shot at those jobs. We will also bring more transparency to our scheduling system so part-time workers can choose more hours for themselves,” Simon said.
The result was the open shifts program, which is available to employees of all U.S. Supercenters, discount stores and Neighborhood Markets, said Wal-Mart spokesman Kory Lundberg. That’s the vast majority of the global retailer’s 1.3 million-member U.S. workforce.
The program started manually, with store managers in Denver and Fort Smith posting open shifts on a bulletin board in the back of the store. It was a matter of right time, right place for associates to get the extra shifts. Now it can be done on a computer, tablet or smartphone.
“They can [sign up] wherever and whenever they want,” Lundberg said.
Associates can call dibs on shifts only in the areas of the store where they’re qualified to work. For instance, a cashier cannot sign up to work a shift in a specialized area such as the pharmacy or automotive.
The system was built to prevent other goofs, such as allowing an employee to work more than 40 hours per week or to work more hours than allowed in a certain period of time.
Lundberg said associates want additional shifts to earn more money, to transition into full-time employment or to pick up experience in different parts of the store in hopes of finding a better fit or a management position.
“It suddenly gives them an advantage over someone who doesn’t have that breadth of experience,” he said.
Justin Barrett, an employee in the Fort Smith Supercenter who tested the program, worked his way from the grocery to being department manager of furniture, fabric and crafts by picking up extra hours.
“Anytime you can step into another department and learn something new and see something you’ve never seen before - and even work with some different people - it’s always going to help you,” Barrett said.
On Friday, he interviewed for a job as assistant manager at another Wal-Mart store.
The store’s manager, 35-yearWal-Mart veteran Kelly Clark, said there were many positive lessons learned from piloting the program.
“We learned really quick that over time, with a little bit of help and a little bit of training, that a lot of people could learn jobs that they never thought they’d have the opportunity to do,” Clark said.
Some shifts still go uncovered, but it’s mostly because of late notice by an employee, he said.
More experienced employees have motivated Wal-Mart to promote from within, Lundberg said.
Officials at OUR Walmart consider it a victory in the treatment of Wal-Mart workers and take credit for bringing about the changes in the scheduling.
Even before Wal-Mart started its online program, a similar system was enacted at a Wal-Mart store in Laurel, Md., said employee Cindy Murray, who works there. She said workers and OUR Walmart members conducted petition drives and organized in-store activities to persuade the retail giant to give associates more hours.
“The reason we went at [Wal-Mart] was because they were cutting workers’ hours - some as low as 16 to 18 hours - which made it impossible to live,” Murray said.
Business, Pages 31 on 04/12/2014