San Francisco has passed a
Retail Workers Bill of Rights that will bring much-needed changes to retail labor practices:
The new rules will require retail chains that have 11 or more locations across the country and employ 20 or more people in San Francisco to provide advance notice of schedules, improve the treatment of part-time employees, and give current workers the opportunity to take on more hours before hiring new people. Employers will have to give their workers at least two weeks’ advance notice of their schedules, and if they fail to do so they will have to give those workers additional “predictability pay.” Workers also get paid if they’re required to be on call but their shifts are canceled. Employers will have to give part-time employees the same starting wage as those working full time in the same position and access to the same benefits.
Currently, workers may not find out what their schedules will be until the last minute, and contend with schedules that shift so much from week to week that they can't rely on a steady paycheck. Employers frequently hire more part-time workers even though their current workers are eager for more hours. Prohibiting such practices, especially combined with the minimum wage increase voters approved earlier this month, is a big step toward cleaning up labor practices in the retail industry. More cities and states should follow, and be a model for a federal law when Congress becomes a little more reasonable.
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.
- Chicago Whole Foods workers went on strike last year over being required to work on Thanksgiving. This year is different.
- The Massachusetts teacher and union leader who the state Department of Labor found probable cause had lost his job for speaking out against school district policies has been reinstated and is back in the classroom. Agustin Morales received a series of bad evaluations and was ultimately terminated after he publicly objected to the use of data walls that highlight students' test scores, sometimes with their names attached. But Monday an agreement was reached to let Morales go back to teaching. According to a statement issued by the Massachusetts Teachers Association:
Terms of the agreement include Mr. Morales' prompt return as a full-time teacher with the Holyoke Public Schools. Additionally, Mr. Morales and the association have agreed to withdraw as settled all pending grievances and claims, including the complaint that is pending before the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations.
The school committee was persuaded that an attempt should be made to negotiate a settlement because of issues that arose with the interpretation and implementation of the new evaluation process that was followed in evaluating Mr. Morales' performance as a teacher during the last school year.
I know I needed some good news this week, and this is definitely good news.
- Have you ever checked out real estate listings on Zillow over lunch? Interestingly, the company is being sued for not letting its workers take lunch breaks and not paying them overtime they'd earned.
- There have been way more than four instances of wage theft in North Carolina in the last five years. But four is how many wage theft lawsuits the state labor commissioner has filed in that time.
In the last fiscal year, the agency took no action on 2011 of 3694 wage theft claims. Those who did recoup wages were only able to do so because their employer voluntarily agreed to pay them back wages. In those cases no employer was fined and no employer was charged with a crime.
- Hmm ... suspicious.