RWDSU Commentary: Santa's Sweatshop? (12/23/07)

Santa’s Sweatshop?

By Stuart Appelbaum

With Christmas closing in, that quick trip to buy those last gifts can be an exercise in pure misery. But as painful as it can be to shop at a store this time of year is nothing compared to what it’s like to work in one.

Behind the cheerful décor, America’s retail industry became Santa’s sweatshop this year. Ask salespeople what the holiday rush has been like and they’ll tell you that they and their coworkers have never worked as hard or as long. They talk about being stressed out and near the breaking point. It’s not hard to understand why.

Faced with cash strapped customers and stiff competition from the Internet and Wal-Martesque “big box” stores, many merchants embraced a strategy that bears an eerie resemblance to the one manufacturers often use in their failed attempts to beat foreign competitors.

Rather than invest in building the stable, skilled workforce it takes to give customers the service they want, retailers instead opted to cut-corners. This meant hiring fewer permanent workers over the course of the year and relying more on temp workers to meet the Christmas rush. Of course, retailers have always put on extra help for the holidays, but unless they’re backed up by experienced sales people, poorly trained temps can sometimes be as much a hindrance as a help. That’s why, this year, consumers have often been faced with outrageously long check out lines and service with a sneer instead of a smile.

But the problems don’t end there. At the same time that they’re calling on their staff to work harder, merchants are also forcing them to work longer. Closing times have been pushed back. Apparently driven by the conviction that insomniacs are their best customers, some retailers have even decided to stay open 24 hours a day through Christmas. The combination of short staffing and long hours isn’t squeezing retail workers; it’s crushing them and taking a huge toll on family life. As one department store worker told me, “They have me working so many hours this year helping other parents buy their kids’ presents, that I seriously don’t even have time to get my kids’ presents.”

Working in retail isn’t easy work. Few of us would choose to spend eight hours on our feet or have an irate customer in our face. Instead of seeing their employees as expenses to be cut, merchants would be better served if they treated their workforce as their best asset. That starts with hiring more permanent employees and investing in the good wages and benefits they earn each day. Keeping stores open all night won’t win loyal customers, but a skilled and committed workforce will.

This year the business-backed National Retail Federation predicted that this Christmas shopping season would yield the smallest sales gains in five years. They said the economy is the reason. But if retailers took a cold, hard look at the way they do business they’d realize that they have partly themselves to blame.