Urban Outfitters asked a few employees to work for free

New York’s lawyer broad says Urban Outfitters tactics to end on-call calendar at its jewelry stores inside of the area.

According to the email, URBN wants these salaried employees to “volunteer” to “pick, pack, and prepare packages for shipment”. Lightly veiled as a “team building activity”, URBN promises lunch and transportation to their fulfillment center “if needed”-how nice!”

Parent company URBN Inc.is asking salaried employees to volunteer to work weekends in a Pennsylvania fulfillment center for free, according to an email obtained by Gawker. The email, with the subject line, “A Call for URBN Volunteers!”, asked employees to help out at a new warehouse in rural Lancaster County, about a 90-minute drive from Philly.

A Call for URBN Volunteers! As a volunteer, you will work side by side with your GFC colleagues to help pick, pack and ship orders for our wholesale and direct customers.

In addition to servicing the needs of our customers, it’s a great way to experience our fulfillment operations first hand. URBN calls this a “team-building activity”.

So, while many of us fret over what retailers such as H&M are doing, or not doing, within their supply chains, there is also plenty of nefarious behavior within the retail industry that should cause concern here at home. Please do not show up without signing up.

Not surprisingly, the retailer’s request has resulted in quite a bit of backlash against the company.

The company URBN, which owns Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Free People, said in the e-mail that October “will be the busiest month yet for the center”, which opened this June.

Others would go the extra distance, calling the memo “appalling”, while a few posited that the company’s executives were ‘scumbags’.

As part of this agreement, Urban Outfitters has also agreed to provide employees with their schedules at least one week prior to the start of the workweek, AG Schneiderman said in a statement.

Due to the upcoming peak holiday shopping season, the retailer is hoping that its workers will volunteer to work more on the weekends without getting paid.