I would like to say that these retailers deserved the schedule law, but the reality is that such a minuscule number of companies were doing the on call scheduling that it did not warrant this blanket approach. This was the equivalent of dropping a nuclear warhead on a pickup truck of insurgents on a battlefield. The practices were mainly mall clothing stores and several state Attorneys General had already started prosecuting the practice. By the time these laws were implemented nobody was doing it anymore and the employees were made whole through fines and penalties, or the company had just plain closed its doors (which if it was an abusive company is a good thing even if the employees had to go find a new job).veteran+ wrote: ↑October 26th, 2021, 8:34 am San Francisco has probably over reacted with this scheduling thing.
But...............................this over reaction is 100% the retailers' fault and I have no pity for them.
For decades and decades they have diminished the work life balance of their employees and in tandem helped to destroy labor unions (unions were not perfect of course).
I have worked at many levels of management and clearly remember the "directives" from above. They were intentional and anti employee. I tried hard to resist these directions, which did not help me with corporate politics, though the "results" of my resistance produced higher rates of productivity, morale and by defacto very happy customers.
Btw, my store, district or region always seemed to be the training location for career minded employees.
All of this is connected.
What the law really does is so severely strangles the retailer that they have no choice but to operate in a manner that is less productive - and then they cut even more hours and eliminate more positions.
If the receiving team is used to trucks arriving at 4am Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, but next week the Thursday truck isn't going to be there until 6am, then they should be able to change the schedule without being penalized. Heck most of the receivers will probably be happy to get a couple hours of extra sleep that morning! But under this stupid law they either have to pay out 8 hours an employee to change them from 4am to 6am, or they leave them at 4am so they come in and twiddle their thumbs for two hours until the load arrives. In more unionized environments that is exactly what will happen as they can't just ask those receivers to go recover aisles or other tasks outside of their job description. Then if the load isn't stocked by end of shift now the team is behind and the store misses sales because the goods are in the back. More loss which means more hours reductions.
I know that when this landed in Oregon my company wound up reducing customer service hours substantially because of the added expense of schedule change penalties. Ultimately all the employees were hurt by this, the stores lost sales, and the customers got a worse experience. And of course the buddy-buddy scams started where the employees collude to call out sick in hopes of collecting the penalty pay as if it is a bounty. Most retailers are still not actively managing attendance policies due to COVID because they know the massive liability if an employee who is sick "feels pressured" to come to work and infects other workers or customers. About the only way they can fire someone with HR approval is if they just plain don't show up and don't call in.
People who have no clue about how an industry operates should not be writing legislation for it. And it makes you wonder who really benefits from the law... Most of the time these are minimum wage employees. If they suddenly are picking up this penalty pay for schedule changes - then they are likely moving up a tax bracket or two - meaning that the real beneficiary is the local, state and federal government.
And yes I have always sided by my employees too which led me to form great teams, see dozens promoted up and sometimes out of my store, and led me to awards and recognition. Doing the right thing for your team means that they will go to the ends of the earth for you when you need them to. When a policy came down that was not right for the team I would calmly gather the facts and specifics, propose an alternate solution which would accomplish similar results, and partner with my DM etc. to ensure it was heard. Many times I would see "last minute changes" announced prior to implementations, and see the suggestions our team put together. Companies that listen to their teams and their customers are the ones that survive and thrive.