Nightmares of Socialism XXVII: Minneapolis Fair-Scheduling Rules

[Nice Squirrel]

Those crazy idealists think they should have a life outside of work.​

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/09/22/work-schedules

Minneapolis businesses are mobilizing against a proposed ordinance that would require them to create employee work schedules four weeks in advance.

Under the draft proposal, employers would have to compensate workers for any unexpected schedule changes. Mayor Betsy Hodges and key members of the City Council want to make Minneapolis the second city in the country with a so-called "fair scheduling" rule.

Under the current draft of the proposed ordinance, Jackson's employer would have to pay him an extra hour's wages when it makes a change like that. He'd get four hours extra pay if the change was made with less than a day's notice.

The proposed ordinance would also address another complaint Jackson has about his schedule — back-to-back shifts.

Four weeks is excessive. IMHO

 

[ksen]

Yeah, a week would be sufficient.

But I'm not surprised at the overreaction given at how shittily employers have been exploiting scheduling.

 

[Bronzeage]

A week might be sufficient, but it depends on the structure of the schedule. In the old days of Monday thru Friday, 40hr week, Saturday and Sunday were considered sacred. It had to be a special circumstance to bring someone in on a weekend.

If a person's days off fall on weekdays, it's different.

There is also the issue of people who take multiple part time jobs. How do you coordinate schedules among two or more employers. This has always been a problem for people who hire students, but it can be handled.

My business hire part time workers. Some of them are students. Since the job pays very little, we compensate by being very flexible and creating the nicest possible working conditions. We do require an availability chart for each month, on the first of the month. We will not schedule them to work on days they choose to be unavailable. If something comes up and they need to change a shift, it's their responsibility to make a deal with a co-worker.


It is kind of strange to see a government creating rules about the workplace, which go beyond public safety concerns. Scheduling is one of the things with which unions routinely deal, when negotiating with management. After decades if labor union recession, now the government steps in. I wonder who management would prefer, if they had the choice.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Yeah, a week would be sufficient.

But I'm not surprised at the overreaction given at how shittily employers have been exploiting scheduling.

Which is the main point. This isn't some vast left wing conspiracy to destroy capitalism and freedom, it's a reaction against expolitive practices which employees currently have to deal with.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Yeah, a week would be sufficient.

But I'm not surprised at the overreaction given at how shittily employers have been exploiting scheduling.

Which is the main point. This isn't some vast left wing conspiracy to destroy capitalism and freedom, it's a reaction against expolitive practices which employees currently have to deal with.

Actually it's consumer driven. Can we make it a law that shoppers in a store can't complain about service?

 

[Achwienichtig]

The law seems well intentioned, but I'm not sure it hit the mark. What is needed is a protection against getting penalized for not being able to make it on a day that you thought you had off. People make plans and have lives outside of work, after all. The right to refuse taking an unexpected shift seems more appealing.

I wonder if businesses could get around this law by creating on-call schedules in addition to regular schedules.

 

[ksen]

At places I've worked on-call schedules came with on-call pay.

Are these businesses willing to pay that?

 

[Achwienichtig]

At places I've worked on-call schedules came with on-call pay.

Are these businesses willing to pay that?

I honestly don't know too much about the law on this matter, but I found this interesting.

http://www.shrm.org/templatestools/hrqa/pages/cms_020208.aspx#sthash.f53cJ1ef.dpuf

If an on-call employee must carry a paging device such as a beeper or cellular phone, and the employee is relieved of his or her duties, the time is unpaid unless the employer has an on-call policy that specifically requires pay during such times. Federal court decisions have held that on-call employees are not overly constrained by a paging device. Therefore, the unpaid, waiting-to-be-engaged status could apply to those employees who are not required to wait near or at the worksite.

 

[coloradoatheist]

The law seems well intentioned, but I'm not sure it hit the mark. What is needed is a protection against getting penalized for not being able to make it on a day that you thought you had off. People make plans and have lives outside of work, after all. The right to refuse taking an unexpected shift seems more appealing.

I wonder if businesses could get around this law by creating on-call schedules in addition to regular schedules.

It will be interesting. I think corporations should move to the uber model.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Which is the main point. This isn't some vast left wing conspiracy to destroy capitalism and freedom, it's a reaction against expolitive practices which employees currently have to deal with.

Actually it's consumer driven. Can we make it a law that shoppers in a store can't complain about service?

No, the stupid first amendment stops anyone from doing that. Thanks a lot, freedom.

We can, however, make it a rule that the employees don't need to listen to their complaints.

 

[Ford]

Nick Rancone employs 55 people at two Nicollet Avenue restaurants — Revival and Corner Table. He says predicting right now how many servers he'll need in late October is impossible.

Back when I was a restaurant manager, we had these things called "projections." We'd take a look at a number of factors but the key one was last year's business for that given time frame. Maybe you'd up the projections if there was a home game (it was a college town) or drop them if that weekend was an away game, factor in whether receipts were trending up or down, and you'd come up with a fairly precise estimate of what business should be like for the week, month, and quarter. You'd schedule accordingly, and cut back if business was lower than projections. It was very rare for us to call in people on the fly, because we had a very clear idea of the staffing needed to handle the projected business.

This was all done in ledgers with calculators to help us do the math quicker. Not exactly rocket science.

We did the schedule at least a week in advance, and the core crew for each day was usually the same people. If you usually worked Saturday night closing shift, you could count on closing next Saturday night. It made sense to keep the schedule as regular as possible (again, a challenge in a college town) because things ran better if the same crew worked together regularly.


If this guy doesn't have the foggiest idea what his numbers will look like in late October, maybe his business won't be around next October.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

If this guy doesn't have the foggiest idea what his numbers will look like in late October, maybe his business won't be around next October.

Ya, the ability to do scheduling is part of running a restaurant. If he overschedules a shift, he needs to pay more in employee costs as a result of his poor management decision and if he underschedules, he can call people up to come in on short notice, but needs to pay them more as a result of the inconvenience. That sort of cost overrun is one of the risks he took on when deciding to open a business and he shouldn't be pushing the costs of that risk onto others like communists would do.

 

[ZiprHead]

This reminds me of that law in eight states that Loren brought up about employees being sent home early. I think the proposal in the OP is excessive but a week is not unreasonable. Put this together with Loren's law and it might be a peach.

 

[dismal]

Bring on the robots.

 

[ZiprHead]

Bring on the robots.

Here you go:

 

[ksen]

Bring on the robots.

If you guys don't actually start doing it the continuous threat starts to lose its impact after awhile.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Bring on the robots.

If you guys don't actually start doing it the continuous threat starts to lose its impact after awhile.

It doesn't have to be robots, but self-service counters. How many does Wal-Mart have now?

 

[dismal]

Bring on the robots.

If you guys don't actually start doing it the continuous threat starts to lose its impact after awhile.

My bank teller and elevator operator were just saying that.

 

[ksen]

If you guys don't actually start doing it the continuous threat starts to lose its impact after awhile.

It doesn't have to be robots, but self-service counters. How many does Wal-Mart have now?

If you guys don't actually start doing it the continuous threat starts to lose its impact after awhile.

My bank teller and elevator operator were just saying that.

The number of bank tellers hasn't fallen with the introduction of ATMs.

But whatever, just bring it on already instead of constantly threatening with it.

People might start to think "robots" is just a scare tactic along with "massive layoffs."

 

[dismal]

It doesn't have to be robots, but self-service counters. How many does Wal-Mart have now?

If you guys don't actually start doing it the continuous threat starts to lose its impact after awhile.

My bank teller and elevator operator were just saying that.

The number of bank tellers hasn't fallen with the introduction of ATMs.

But whatever, just bring it on already instead of constantly threatening with it.

People might start to think "robots" is just a scare tactic along with "massive layoffs."

I'm going to let you in on a secret: There is no "us" that brings things on and constantly threatens things.