Part of the reason that companies enacted irregular schedules was to remove the ability of managers to schedule employees in a biased (or perceived as biased) manner. Some examples:

* Employee A gets a more desirable shift than employee B. Employee A also gets along with the manager better that employee B.

* Employee A gets a more desirable shift than employee B because employee A has worked for the company longer. Employee B is equally capable of doing the work.

* Employee A gets a more desirable shift than employee B. Employee B feels that it's because of race/gender/sexual orientation.

* Employee A covers the shift of employee B. Employee A now has enough hours to qualify as a "full-time" employee, causing an administrative headache.

This is not to say that completely randomizing work schedules is the answer, just to point out that there's more reasoning for these systems than the article suggests.

(edit: I worked for a major U.S. retailer when they were implementing such a system.)