City Council passes secure scheduling law

The Seattle City Council passed legislation on Monday, Sept. 19, that will give a number of food and retail employees earlier notice of their work schedules and require large employers to provide increased compensation when those schedules change.

The secure scheduling legislation will apply to retail and food service establishments with 500 or more employees worldwide and full service restaurants with 500 or more employees and at least 40 locations worldwide.

Among the city councilmembers spearheading the legislation was Lisa Herbold, who said Monday the focus on larger businesses would capture those employees most affected by unpredictable work schedules. She added that such employers were most likely to have the human resource staffing to allow them to carry out the new law.

Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez joined Herbold in promoting the legislation’s development, which involved 17 stakeholder meetings over the past eight months between Mayor Ed Murray’s office and council staff. The city Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development and Arts Committee held 10 meetings in that time, including a meeting with representatives from the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement. 

San Francisco was the first city to adopt secure scheduling legislation in November 2014. The policy went into effect in March after more than a year spent developing its rules and procedures.

Seattle’s law is planned to go into effect much sooner, in July 2017. 

Under the law, employers must make a “good faith estimate” of an employee’s hours at least 14 days beforehand. Any changes to the schedule after that time will require one hour of pay in addition to wages earned, if those changes do not cause a loss of hours. 

A loss of hours after the schedule is posted will will entitle employees to half-pay for time lost — including those employees placed on call who are not actually called into work. 

Employees will have the right to decline changes without retaliation.

In crafting the city’s legislation, Seattle city officials commissioned a survey of scheduling managers and employees by Vigdor Measurement & Evaluation.

That survey found 25 percent of respondents received notice of their upcoming work schedule less than three days in advance. About half of employee respondents said, if given the choice, they would prefer a week’s advance notice of their schedule over a 20 percent pay premium.

Grocery worker Jeanette Randall told the council Monday she receives her work schedule two days prior to its start, as does her husband, who is in the same industry. The secure scheduling legislation will allow them to better plan for child care, as well as attendance at school functions and medical appointments, Randall said.

“We’ve seen decades of just-in-time scheduling,” said Working Washington executive director Sejal Parikh. Parikh added that employees are often also called upon to fill shifts on short notice. 

“For too long, power has rested 100 percent with employers,” she said.

Another section of the legislation requires employers to offer existing staff additional hours before hiring new employees.

“This is what economic security and the demand for economic security looks like,” Gonzalez said. “It is meaningless, in my belief, to have one of the highest minimum wages, if you only work five hours one week.”

The secure scheduling legislation also prohibits “clopening” schedules, where an employee may be required to work until closing and then come back in for a store’s opening shift. If such a gap in opening and closing is less than 10 hours, the employee will receive time-and-a-half for the difference, under the law. 

Three quarters of employees surveyed by Vigdor reported working a “clopening” in the prior two weeks — 31 percent of those respondents said the arrangement was required by their employer.

As she did following Seattle’s success in pushing for a staggered minimum wage increase to $15, Councilmember Kshama Sawant said “this victory is going to be contagious in America.”

New York City, Washington, D.C., and Albuquerque, New Mexico, are also considering secure scheduling legislation.

The Seattle Office of Labor Standards will enforce the law, which provides penalties for employer violations starting at $500 per affected worker for the first violation, and increasing fines for additional violations.