Labor advocates rejoiced Sept. 19 when the Seattle City Council passed what many hail as the strongest protections for hourly employees in the country.
The “secure scheduling” law approved unanimously by councilmembers requires employers to notify hourly employees of their schedules two weeks in advance and to offer any extra hours first to existing employees before hiring new ones. If an employer initiates last-minute shift changes or back-to-back opening and closing shifts with less than 10 hours between them they would have to pay extra.
It applies only to retail, restaurant and drinking establishment workers at companies with 500 or more employees worldwide, as well as full-service employees at restaurants with 500 employees and 40 locations worldwide.
The goal is to make sure that hourly employees working for companies with the means to shoulder the extra administrative burden get some certainty about how much they’re working and when, and to give them access to enough hours to make it in Seattle, one of America’s fastest-growing cities.
It’s the second such law in the country, and is seen as a continuation of Seattle’s progressive labor agenda, building off the success of the $15 minimum wage law.
“This is monumental,” said Sejal Parikh, executive director of Working Washington, an advocacy group that has been a champion of the legislation. “For too long power has rested 100 percent with employers.”
The law has been developed with labor and business interests at the table for the past nine months with support from councilmembers Lorena Gonzalez and Lisa Herbold. The City Council heard testimony from experts who conducted national research on the topic, and hired others to examine the local labor market.
The results from both weighed heavily in favor of employees who described getting their schedules sometimes just a couple days in advance of their shifts, difficulty balancing school and other responsibilities with uncertain work schedules and struggling to get enough hours to make ends meet.
Some of the strongest voices against the move were franchisees, particularly Subway owners who feel that they’re more of a small business than a piece of a giant corporation. But, as previously reported by the Associated Press, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to the minimum wage law by franchise owners who had sued saying they should be treated as small businesses.
A federal judge had previously ruled against them.
As questions about a $12 national minimum wage make headway in the presidential race and chances get better that Washington state residents will get a chance to vote on a $13.50 statewide minimum wage in November, the question becomes whether or not this secure scheduling law will have legs outside of the Emerald City.
Portland, Oregon, Commissioner Steve Novick, who bills himself as a “commissioner with a hard left hook,” chimed in on Twitter saying, “Great work, Seattle! I’m looking forward to learning more about secure scheduling for Portlanders.”
The new law will go into effect in July 2017.