EVERYONE'S TALKING
- Syncing calendars. Two people work similar jobs, doing similar work. There may be a pay gap—if you guessed that's where this could be going—but there's another disparity too: their schedules.
"Black and Hispanic women had the worst schedules, and white men had the best," Claire Cain Miller reports in the New York Times, the findings coming from surveys of 30,000 hourly workers by the Shift Project at the University of California. "The children of workers with precarious schedules had worse behavior and more inconsistent childcare than those whose parents had stable schedules."
Irregular schedules have become a point of activism for workers across industries, especially fast food and retail. After an experiment with business school researchers that was chronicled last year, Gap Inc. eliminated "on-call" shifts that forced store employees to keep their schedules open and find childcare without the guarantee of paid work. The company also required stores to post workers' schedules two weeks in advance (workers in the industry are often given as little notice as three days). Sales in stores with more stable scheduling increased 7%.
But not all companies have taken those steps. As Cain Miller reports, irregular scheduling is all too common, and it hurts women of color the most. Researchers pinned the disparity on discrimination. Taking out all other factors, from education to seniority, managers simply "gave worse shifts to employees who weren’t white."
Any problems faced by low-wage workers were worse for those earning the same money on a more unpredictable schedule; workers whose schedules varied without notice were twice as likely to report hardships like not being able to pay bills or arrange childcare.
Two-thirds of minimum wage jobs are held by women. They need equal pay—and equal schedules.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Money moves. Want to improve your company's results? Put a woman in charge of the money. Within the first two years of appointing female CFOs, "companies saw, on average, a 6% increase in profits and an 8% better stock return" for a total of $1.8 trillion in additional cumulative profits, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence study. Bloomberg
- First-year endorsement. Rep. Ilhan Omar endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders in the presidential race, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will reportedly soon follow. The endorsements from the progressive first-term lawmakers are a coup for Sanders over Sen. Elizabeth Warren; the verdict isn't set yet for the other members of "the squad," Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. Vox
- Striking a deal. Mary Barra's GM and the United Autoworkers union came to a tentative agreement to end workers' month-long strike. Union officials say they will decide Thursday whether to resume work or stay on strike until members ratify the treaty, which could take several more weeks. Fortune
- Comments come with a cost. Billionaire Ken Fisher last week at an investment conference made sexist comments comparing winning clients to "going up to a woman in a bar and saying, hey, I want to talk about what’s in your pants." Now his firm has lost $248 million in pension assets, pulled by the City of Boston; Fidelity is reviewing a $500 million relationship with the firm. "The statements made by Ken Fisher implicate not only his own judgment, but potentially that of the company as a whole," Boston Mayor Martin Walsh wrote in a letter to the city's retirement board. CNBC
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Thrillist hired Helen Hollyman as editor-in-chief. Arnold Worldwide CEO Kiran Smith left the agency. iHeart Media's Lee Rolontz joins Global Citizen as SVP of broadcast and events. Yoky Matsuoka, VP at Google and former CTO of Nest, will be the CEO of a new company within Panasonic. Shonda Rhimes's Shondaland signed a three-year deal with iHeartMedia to produce original podcasts through a new division, Shondaland Audio. Former Rep. Susan Molinari joins the advisory board of consulting firm Protiviti.
Inclusion Starts With Conversations
An increasing number of executives want to create more inclusive work environments. But how? Dr. Terri Cooper, Deloitte’s chief inclusion officer, reflects on the impact of dialogue at the company’s first Inclusion Summit. Read more
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Co-working and Kabbalah. Rebekah Neumann got her husband, Adam, into Kabbalah—and in WeWork's early years, the company had close connections to the Kabbalah Centre. The Neumanns cut ties after a series of controversies at the Centre. Wall Street Journal
- Further than fines. Margrethe Vestager is known for slapping tech companies with gigantic fines, but as she starts her second term as the EU's competition commissioner (and now digital policymaker), she wants to move from punitive to preventative measures. Vestager is interested in tools to "reorganize a marketplace before consumers or competitors suffer." Wall Street Journal
- Earnings report. IBM's stock fell after the company, led by Ginni Rometty, missed analyst estimates in its earnings yesterday. Revenue has dropped for five straight quarters—despite 20% growth in IBM's recent major acquisition, Red Hat. CNBC
- One night at Mount Sinai. In 2017, Mount Sinai doctor David Newman was sentenced to two years in prison for sexually abusing patients. Now, the story of Aja Newman, who went to the emergency room for shoulder pain but became one of his victims. It's a tough but necessary read. The Cut
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ON MY RADAR
Taylor Swift: Tiny desk concert NPR
Chelsea Clinton rules out running for Congress in 2020 Washington Post
[Humor] Origin stories of tech companies if their founders had been women The New Yorker
Cat Marnell is back from the brink New York Times
QUOTE
"People always talk about my age. For other people it seems to be a big deal but for me it’s just my reality."
-15-year-old tennis phenom Coco Gauff
