The Prevalence and Consequences of Punitive Time and Attendance Policies in the Food and Retail Industries

Background and Purpose: Work has become increasingly precarious over the past fifty years, including but not limited to an erosion of wages and fringe benefits. In this paper, we highlight a relatively new and understudied dimension of precarious work: punitive time and attendance policies. These policies assign points for attendance policy violations that can accumulate and lead to progressively more serious consequences. The limited available literature suggests that these policies may disproportionately disadvantage workers with chronic illness, disability, or caregiving responsibilities, may increase turnover, and may reduce productivity.

Methods: The study draws on new survey data collected by the Shift Project from 4,209 workers employed in 132 large service sector firms. Recruitment occurred via targeted advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. Despite being a nonprobability sample, the resulting population replicates gold-standard data sources. We document the prevalence of workers’ exposure to time and attendance systems and present OLS regression models of the association between exposure and parenthood and health status. Finally, we use OLS regression models to estimate the association between exposure to time and attendance systems and job-related and health outcomes.

Results: We find that point systems are common, with more than 2 of 5 hourly workers at large service sector firms subject to a punitive attendance point system at work. Among those whose workplace used a point system, about 3 in 5 workers had no points, 1 in 5 had points without experiencing consequences, and 1 in 5 reported experiencing consequences as a result of accruing points. We also find that workers in poor health are disproportionately penalized under point systems. Having received a point was associated with a higher likelihood of looking for a job, lower job satisfaction, worse sleep, and higher levels of psychological distress. Importantly, respondents who were exposed to a points system – even without having received a point or consequence – were less happy.

Conclusions and Implications: Because workers who are penalized through point systems have worse job satisfaction and health outcomes, point systems may compound disadvantages faced by workers with disabilities or chronic health conditions. Thus, these systems may increase precarity in an already precarious market with the potential to affect employment attachment and reliance on public benefits, as well as individual and population health. Research and policymaking related to punitive time and attendance policies are in their infancy, but our results establish that these policies are common, consequential, and worthy of further study and policy development.