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Senate Bill Proposes Restaurant, Retail Workers Receive Schedules Week(s) In Advance

Noah Coffey
/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noahwesley/

Restaurant and retail workers would have to get their work schedules at least two weeks in advance under a bill proposed in the state Senate.

Sen. Karen Tallian (D-Portage) says it's increasingly common for stores and restaurants to wait till the last minute to tell employees whether they're working, or to send them home after they show up for work.

Tallian says that’s unfair...

“They’ve scheduled their lives around having to be at work: daycare, moving, taking care of children or people at home,” Tallian says.

Tallian's bill would require partial pay if an employer changes the work shift less than a week in advance.

“It could be a week or two weeks in advance and then, if they called off the employee and said, ‘You don’t need to come today’ or ‘We’re letting you go early,’ there would be some amount of wages paid,” she says.

A San Francisco ordinance sets a similar requirement for all businesses.

Tallian says she limited her proposal to retail and restaurants because other industries, such as construction, may have legitimate reasons for leaving schedules up in the air, with work contingent on weather or earlier steps in a process.

The Senate Labor Committee took testimony on the bill this week but isn't expected to vote.