Flexible scheduling, degradation of job quality and barriers to collective voice
通过对英国一家大型零售企业的案例研究，发现灵活排班虽增强了企业灵活性，但损害了员工的工作质量感知，且工会和集体谈判在改善排班方面效果有限。
This article examines the operation of flexible scheduling in practice through a case study of a large retail firm in the United Kingdom. It includes analysis of 39 semi-structured interviews, participant observation of shop floor work and non-participant observation of union organizing as well as analysis of key documents. The findings highlight the high level of generalized temporal flexibility across employment statuses. This temporal flexibility enables firm flexibility without necessitating a reliance upon contingent workers. Temporal flexibility is found to entail manager-control of flexible scheduling and is shown to be damaging to perceptions of job quality as it acts as a barrier to work-life balance. Union presence and collective bargaining at the firm are found to be ineffective at influencing flexible scheduling so as to improve job quality. This ineffectiveness can be explained by the union operating in an employer-dominated industrial relations environment in which its associational power is unable to compensate for a lack of institutional and structural economic power.