New York City has joined San Francisco and Seattle in enacting ordinances intended to provide more “predictable scheduling” for hourly fast food and retail employees.
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio recently signed into law a package of bills known collectively as the “Fair Workweek” laws. The package of laws, which is scheduled to go into effect on November 26, 2017, creates a host of new rules that covered fast food and retail employers operating in the city will need to follow when scheduling or modifying shifts for their hourly employees.
Covered retail employers effectively will be banned from on-call scheduling and will be required to post employees’ work schedules at least 72 hours before the scheduled shift. Covered fast food employers will be required to post shift schedules 14 days in advance and will be required to pay premiums for last-minute shift changes, offer open shifts to current employees before hiring new ones, and avoid scheduling shifts that force the same employee to close the restaurant and then re-open the next morning, a.k.a. “clopening” shifts.
Additional information regarding the “Fair Workweek” package, including links to the text of each bill, is available here.
Members of the Equal Employment Advisory Council (EEAC) can read more here.