Archived More hours cut

[PassinTime]

I wonder how long before Target America goes the way of Target Canada. After all its just a higher priced Walmart

Or Target becomes Target.com, only. Assuming Spot can get his IT shit together and have a website that doesn't crash or put shoppers in a cue to shop.

 

[thetargetman]

Target loves to screw people over!

 

[Kartman]

I wonder how long before Target America goes the way of Target Canada

 

[redeye58]

Since I've come back to spot several long-timers I've know are floating close to the cut-off level.
They're discouraged from picking up shifts; any time they're cutting hours, theirs are cut first; during closing shifts, they're sent home before the kids.
We also had an atty come thru recently to ask certain TMs if they thought spot was biased against older workers; apparently there's a lawsuit brewing.

 

[Rarejem]

Ok who actually does this....I think you're a little paranoid.

Wrong. It happened to me. I went from an average of 38 hours to 29.3...just enough to lose it all. I haven't been scheduled more than 27/week this year. I've been with the company for 15 years and have carried my family's insurance since I was eligible... until now.

 

[Rarejem]

Oh,,, and I was told that I could consider voluntarily demoting to cashier if I wanted to get my hours. Yeah...and if those hours are available and I am crosstrained, then why wouldn't I get them anyway? If those hours surpassed my primary workcenter, I'd get changed anyhow. I told them that any demotion would absolutely not be voluntary. (BTW, I am a top performer in my department and I am basing that on numbers, not my opinion .)

 

[Bosch]

Wrong. It happened to me. I went from an average of 38 hours to 29.3...just enough to lose it all. I haven't been scheduled more than 27/week this year. I've been with the company for 15 years and have carried my family's insurance since I was eligible... until now.

Exactly what was done to me. I am lucky my husband has great insurance, but I have never not carried my own coverage until now. 20+ years. 28hrs this year.. If I pick some up I have to have them signed off by my ETL cause the others will not sign off on it.

 

[Greenandred]

I wonder how long before Target America goes the way of Target Canada. After all its just a higher priced Walmart

Target America is doing much better than Target Canada. The shelves are much more impactful than they were in Canada and there are plenty of people that hate shopping at Wal-Mart and Target is perceived as being a higher class retailer with better service. Even though, sales were sluggish in the beginning of May, we have started to see an uptick at our store and have been making our forecasts. The bathroom controversy is also dying down. I do not believe the company is in any trouble.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Our issue is that the CEOs gets a great pay raise with his minions, regular tm/tl get peanuts for raises.

 

[Joejoe12]

Upper level management will always get paid more than hourly employees. Reason we are paid so little is that there is no real skills needed to do a tm job. Upper management jobs require more skills and in turn have higher pay

 

[Bosch]

Upper level management will always get paid more than hourly employees. Reason we are paid so little is that there is no real skills needed to do a tm job. Upper management jobs require more skills and in turn have higher pay

Though Target Canada shows just cause you can get that fat salary - Doesn't mean you have any skills at all.. Cause everyone said it was a shit idea and what was really needed to pull it off and they ignored it..

 

[atceiah]

Add me to the list of people close to losing insurance benefits. Been here 5 years, always working 35-40 hours, now lucky if I get 30 for the last few months. Shitty thing to do. I will put in my 2 weeks once its official.

 

[Flabbergasted]

Upper level management will always get paid more than hourly employees. Reason we are paid so little is that there is no real skills needed to do a tm job. Upper management jobs require more skills and in turn have higher pay

Yeah ok. We get it. The CEO deserves higher pay than the Softlines TM folding clothes. No one's saying he doesn't. What we are saying is that workers should be paid better wages. Right now, what TMs make is peanuts. We know Spot can afford better -- they just choose to pay people less. And then they cut positions, slash hours and have skeleton crews running the store, and that's not okay. We wonder why guests don't want to sign up for REDcards or they leave negative feedback on the survey. Why turnover is so high and no one wants to stick around. This is why.

 

[Tired Grunt]

Often times we forget that Spot, like every other company exist purely to make a profit. They answer to the investors, not their employees. Corporate conscious and responsibilities are often times neglected. And as such, from a business perspective its understandable management would try to cut cost, with labor being one of the prime numbers, especially in mature companies such as Spot.

One can argue that paying a better wage to those working at the lower levels would lead to better moral, services and in general a much more friendlier environment which in the long run would boost sales and revenue/profits, but then we have to consider factors that really pushes against it. First, its the investors again; increasing wages, benefits and all that good stuff would stick out on any earnings report while the boost in sales/revenues/profits take time to manifest. Investors aren't known to be the most patient, and it'll be hard to convince them otherwise without the stock of spot taking a major hit and affecting a sizable dividend that Spot pays out.

The perception of retail work is another wind hard to sail against, because the prevailing argument is that retail work should only serve as a temporary job, transition job or a supplementary job. As such, a company cannot commit too much resources to a workforce that is expected to have high turn-over, that wouldn't be efficient and very costly.

I'm sure there are other reasons, but its just my two-cents on the whole hours, benefits and pay stuff. Do I believe they can afford to pay more, even though its retail? Absolutely, companies like Costco pays very well across the boards for their employees, but unfortunately Spot operates differently, and Spot's investors have their own expectations/agenda on how the company should be operated and how their capital should be invested.

 

[SFSFun]

Upper level management will always get paid more than hourly employees. Reason we are paid so little is that there is no real skills needed to do a tm job. Upper management jobs require more skills and in turn have higher pay

No one is arguing that corporate executives should be paid the same as TMs. They absolutely should be paid more. But the disparity between their pay and ours is so far beyond reasonable.

 

[redeye58]

As tired grunt says, the bigger problem is the shareholders.
The more they can squeeze out of front-line TMs, the bigger their returns so they really don't care that they're killing the gold-laying goose because it's all about short-term gains.
They don't care about the single mom losing her benefits & they justify it as 'needs of the business to remain competitive' ad nauseum.

 

[PassinTime]

Doesn't help that sales are projected to be down 2% this quarter. Just means more cuts.

 

[Firefox]

We hired a bunch of people on Monday (orientation had probably around 12 people) and our HRTM had to tell each and every one of them that since we were out of training hours, none of them were getting scheduled at all for the next two weeks. What a travesty.

I have 24 hours on next week's schedule, but that's partly because of a vacation request of mine. I expect to see a full 40 on the two week out schedule since our backroom team is still pretty barebones.

 

[glo]

Already lost 2-3 TMs just in this quarter alone due to hour cuts.

We've lost ~30 this year.

 

[Bosch]

We hired a bunch of people on Monday (orientation had probably around 12 people) and our HRTM had to tell each and every one of them that since we were out of training hours, none of them were getting scheduled at all for the next two weeks. What a travesty.

I have 24 hours on next week's schedule, but that's partly because of a vacation request of mine. I expect to see a full 40 on the two week out schedule since our backroom team is still pretty barebones.

That is just bullshit. I bet most don't come back.

 

[thenewgirl]

They just completely change the schedule. There - it's "posted on the schedule."

That's exactly what they did.
It would be hard to get a second job, part time, when my schedule is different each week. I'm still inside 90 days so I can't change my availability.

I just think it's shitty business practice. Stop hiring people! Seems like new cashiers start every day. Why keep hiring if you're cutting hours?

 

[Kartman]

Cashiers will always be quitting because of the red card bullshit.

 

[StrawberryBanana]

We've lost ~30 this year.

I was told that we lost thirty people so far this year, but that was at the beginning of May so I am sure the number is higher now.

 

[Kartman]

Such a waste of time and money.

 

[StrawberryBanana]

I just saw my new schedule and I have 12 hours over three different days. They are all cashier shifts and I am a sales floor person. I have no idea how it is possible, but the cuts for sales floor hours are getting deeper at my store because some days we have zero sales floor people until the closing team comes in around 4/5pm. It also doesn't make sense to have four/five cashiers, a guest service TM, and two GSTLs at one time, but no one on the sales floor besides one TL doing everything. If there are that many people that need to check out then it means the store is busy and people will probably need help on the sales floor or at least need to be greeted.

But good thing they hired 14 new people about three weeks ago and are still doing interviews.