Times are tough for retail workers. Though NYC retailers had a pretty good holiday season, according to a new report the 242,000 grunts actually doing the selling on NYC store floors won't really be seeing the fruits of their labor. Especially if they have two X chromosomes or are not white. Though they make up the majority of the "frontline retail workforce" the report says that those groups "disproportionately face barriers to career advancement, benefits, and wage parity." And how!
According to the report—which talked to 436 workers in the city and was financed both by CUNY's Murphy Institute and the union-backed Retail Action Project—female non-union retail workers are "less likely than men to receive health coverage and paid time off, or to be offered a promotion." And it gets more depressing when you compare white workers and workers of other races: "whereas 54 percent of white workers received a raise and promotion after working at least six months on the job, only 39 percent of black workers, and 28 percent of Latino workers" saw the same. Oh, and if you are a Latino woman, times are especially tough: According to the report, 77 percent of Latinas working retail made less than $10 per hour. Not that retail workers are making bank or anything. According to the study, mean hourly pay was $10 in Manhattan, $9 in Queens, $8.50 in Brooklyn and $8 in the Bronx (there weren't figures available for Staten Island).
But wait, there's more! The big shift in retail over the last decade is that, "Guaranteed work hours are no longer the normal and just ‘getting on the schedule’ has become the reward for job performance." Which means workers do their best to never miss a day. The study found that fewer than half of those interviewed were entitled to paid sick days—and of those more than half have never used one. And it goes on: two in five of the city's retail workers are full-time, slightly more than half were part-time, and the rest were temporary or holiday workers. The report also found that only about one in 10 part-time workers had a set schedule week to week, with many working 15 or 20 hours a week. All of which barely gets many workers near the federal poverty line!
The whole report [PDF] is full of similar disturbing facts ("More than one in three reported that they sometimes worked more than 10 hours a day, and a sizable number of them were not paid overtime when they did, as mandated by state law.") but for those keeping score at home, according to the researchers the worst retail offenders in town are, in no particular order are: JC Penney, Abercrombie & Fitch, Esprit, Old Navy, Forever 21, Uniqlo, Banana Republic, Target, Club Monaco, Tommy Hilfiger, and Victoria's Secret. And now you know.
