State Proposal to Mandate Pay for Worker Shift Changes Draws Fire

Business advocates in California are lashing out against a bill in the state legislature that would require grocers, retailers and restaurants to pay special wages if they change the shifts that an employee is scheduled to work with less than seven days notice.

Sen. Connie Leyva, a Democrat who represents a district east of Los Angeles, introduced the bill last month. It calls for employers to give employees their work schedules for no fewer than 21 consecutive calendar days. Businesses would have to provide the schedules at least a week before an employee’s first shift during that time.

Leyva said in a recent statement that it had become clear to her that many hourly employees are “treated unfairly by their employers when they do not find out when or even if they are working until an hour or two before they are required to show up.”

“Shifts are sometimes canceled with little to no notice and employee work schedules are not even finalized promptly for the sole convenience of the employer,” the state senator added.

But the California Chamber of Commerce said Wednesday that it added the bill to a 2020 list of “job killer” legislation it will oppose in the state legislature. One of the business group's main objections is that the bill would hamper flexibility for employees and workers. 

Under the proposal, businesses would be required to pay employees “modification pay” based on a sliding scale of how much notice they provided about a shift change.

If a shift is canceled or moved with less than 24-hours notice, employees would be eligible for at least half of their regular pay for the affected shift’s scheduled hours, up to a four-hour maximum. 

On the other hand, if an employer cancels or moves any of a worker’s shifts with less than a one-week notice, but more than a 24-hour notice, they’d have to pay the employee modification pay equal to at least one hour of their regular wage.

When a person is required to work at a time when they weren’t scheduled, the modification pay would be in addition to their standard wages for the shift.

If employers don’t follow the rules outlined in the bill, they would be subject to various fines.

There are exceptions to the modification pay requirements—for instance, if there’s a public utility failure or a natural disaster, if another employee can’t work a shift because they call in sick, or if two employees agree to trade shifts.

Leyva unsuccessfully backed a similar proposal in 2016. 

Laura Curtis, a lobbyist for the Chamber, said in a Feb. 5 letter to Leyva that the bill tries to impose a faulty, one-size-fits-all approach to scheduling on businesses. “While some may have predictability in their business cycle and, therefore, have the ability to provide such extensive notice, others simply cannot," Curtis wrote.

Weather, community events and staffing changes are among the factors that can make it difficult for retail and food businesses to schedule employees well in advance, she went on to write.

Curtis added that the bill would also “force an employee to predict their own schedule more than 30 days in advance in order to provide their availability to an employer so the employer can create a schedule more than 28 days in the future.”

Several Bay Area localities—including San Francisco, Emeryville and Berkeley—have adopted policies meant to provide workers in fields like retail and fast food with scheduling protections. But the Chamber argues that these measures are much narrower than the state bill.

Software designed to bring in workers based on considerations like when stores will be busy or receive deliveries is one factor that has contributed to uncertain schedules in recent years.

An October report by researchers at the University of California Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment found that “schedule insecurity” is widespread in the service sector and that it’s negative effects fall disproportionately on minority workers.

“Our research makes clear that the time dimensions of work matter a lot for the wellbeing of workers and their families,” one of the co-authors, Kristen Harknett, said in a statement. 

The report suggests that workers in the food and retail sector who have unstable and unpredictable work schedules are more vulnerable to hardships when it comes to affording food and housing.

“Chronic uncertainty about when and how much you’re expected to work is hard on anyone,” Harknett added. “For workers with few resources, this uncertainty can have dire consequences.”

A related paper, referenced in the report, contends that “the benefits of ‘flexible’ scheduling arrangements in low-wage work appear to accrue to employers, who can flexibly allocate labor to match customer demand by passing along instability to their employees.”

This paper also features data from an online survey of service sector workers. Looking at responses from 1,725 people, only 48.6% reported receiving their schedule more than two weeks in advance and nearly 17% said they received no more than three days of notice.