Government Wants to Fix Your Waiter’s ‘Unpredictable’ Work Schedule

Part-time workers are sick of the unpredictability of their work
schedules and the government
wants to fix that. That is the premise behind the
oh-so-cleverly titled “Schedules
that Work Act,” legislation introduced
this week that says it will “require employers to provide more
predictable and stable schedules for employees” who work part time
or hourly.

How will our elected officials do this? By forcing bosses and
employees to talk it out:

[Employers] shall engage in a timely, good faith interactive
process with the employee that includes a discussion of potential
schedule changes that would meet the employers needs.

Groundbreaking.

According to The New York Times, laws like this are a
part of a
“growing national movement” to curb practices like “requiring
employees to work unpredictable hours that wreak havoc with
everyday routines like college and child care.” Vermont and San
Francisco have already “adopted laws giving workers the right to
request flexible or predictable schedules to take care of children
or aging parents.”

But employers don’t have to grant schedule requests if they have
a “bona fide business reason” for not doing so. The only thing
proposals like these do is show the ignorance of the lawmakers
pushing for their passage. 

The industries that the Schedues That Work Act is aimed
at—hospitality, retail, food service—use flexible schedules because
to stay profitable they must adjust their labor supply to meet a
demand that fluctuates widely from day to day. For example, the
amount of customers that visit a restaurant  can change
rapidly depending on hard-to-predict factors such as whether it
rained that day or whether regular patrons decided to try out a new
restaurant around the block.

It’s true that a lot of part-time workers are unhappy with their
employment conditions. The number of part-time workers who would
prefer to work full time has nearly doubled since 2007, to 7.5
million, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Almost half of part-time, hourly workers receive a week or less of
advance notice about their schedule. 

Unpredictable scheduling practices can be frustrating for
workers, but the government can’t fix that. Workers, however,
can. The New York Times article gives a great
examples of this:

Sharlene Santos says her part-time schedule at a Zara clothing
store in Manhattan—ranging from 16 to 24 hours a week—is not
enough. “Making $220 a week, that’s not enough to live on—it’s not
realistic,” she said.

After Ms. Santos and four other Zara workers recently wrote to
the company, protesting that they were given too few hours and
received just two days’ notice for their schedule, the company
promised to start giving them two weeks’ advance notice.

Not all companies will be so receptive, and that’s okay because
they will lose out on retaining good employees. Eventually, those
workers frustrated with inefficient management will leave for
positions that better suit their scheduling needs, or they will
gain more skills and be able to move to a position of higher skill,
better pay and, yes, a schedule that fits their needs.