Ok, first of all do not, do *not*, do NOT, confront this person directly. Once upon a a time that was the correct thing to do. With the way things are in the workplace now, if you confront her what will happen is she will go to your boss and claim that you either threatened her or made sexual advances to her, and you will be presumed guilty unless you can prove your innocence (which is almost impossible to do). And you do NOT want that to happen.
Instead the thing to do is to talk with some of your other co-workers. Ask rather than tell, and don't mention the name of the person who is the problem. Phrase things like "Does it seem to you like someone on the shift isn't doing their fair share?" If (when) your co-workers agree with you that there is a problem ask if they would be willing to go with you to talk to your manager about it. If three or four of you go together to speak to the manager s/he will have to take the situation seriously.
I have been in the position of being the person who had the title "manager" but unfortunately had no authority to hire/fire/discipline any of the people I was in charge of on a night crew. When the crew I was in charge of had a very similar problem it went on for months, because no matter how many times I reported the situation to the people who *could* do anything about it, they ignored it as long as the work was getting done. It was my problem for a few months, then when the store needed someone really responsible in receiving I was transferred there, and it became someone else's headache for a while. And continued to get worse. No matter how often the person in charge of the crew reported it to management, nothing was ever done and the jproblem continued to escalate. The situation finally resolved when one manager was in really early before the crew left, and fired the offending individual *not* for simply not doing the work (for a period of almost two years at this point) but for making a smart remark. Go figure.
I've had other similar situations more times than I care to think about.
It speaks very well of you that you are concerned for what might happen to her child/children if she loses her job but you have to look at it this way. If she continues to get away with not doing the work, other people will begin to think "Why should I bust my rear end when so-and-so gets away with doing nothing?" and begin to act the same way. And before you know it, no-one is doing anything. And the store can't function. And the store closes. Then no-one has a job there. This is why stores have managers, to take care of tough decisions like this.
I also note that you said she transferred to nights from the day shift. It's likely that she was causing problems there too, and the transfer was a way for management to get complaints from the day crew to stop w/o having to do the stressful thing of firing someone. But it's not a solution, it's sweeping something under the rug. There's also the fact that she won't learn anything unless/until she has serious consequences for her behavior.
