REMARKS
Council Member Julie Menin opens legislative hearing on Fair Workweek Law enforcement and worker protection
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4 min
Council Member Julie Menin opens the legislative hearing to discuss the enforcement and impact of the Fair Workweek Law.
- Menin highlights the negative effects of unpredictable work schedules on workers' health and well-being, disproportionately affecting workers of color and women
- She reviews the background and provisions of the Fair Workweek Law covering fast food, retail, and utility safety industries
- Menin emphasizes the law's enforcement metrics and the need to ensure compliance and worker protection
- The hearing agenda includes DCWP's enforcement effectiveness, case resolution times, reported violations like those at Starbucks, and the law's impact on working families
Julie Menin
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for joining our legislative hearing today before the council's Committee on Consumer And Worker Protection.
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Good morning.
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I am Julie Menin, Chair of the Committee on Consumer And Worker Protection.
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Research has found that inconsistent and unpredictable work schedules are linked to negative impacts on workers' health and well-being including psychological distress, poor sleep quality, higher rates of unhappiness, and less household economic security.
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This burden falls disproportionately on workers of color, particularly women of color, as they're more likely to have jobs with unpredictable work schedules, and they are more likely to have responsibility for childcare and elder care.
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And it is not just the workers themselves who bear the impact.
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When a parent has inconsistent and unpredictable work schedules, it can lead to behavioral and sleep problems, school absences, and even poor health outcomes comes for their children.
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In 2017, the council enacted a package of legislation that ended unfair and inconsistent scheduling practices.
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In the fast food and retail industries, also known as a Fair Workweek Law, the subject of the hearing.
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In 2021, coverage was expanded to include utility safety employees or people who inspect gas pipes or work in underground facilities, for example.
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Under the Fair Workweek law, fast food employees, employers in New York City must give workers regular schedules.
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Work schedules 14 days in advance that are consistent with their regular schedule, premium pay for schedule changes, the opportunity to decline to work additional time, and the opportunity to work newly available shifts before hiring new workers.
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Fast food employers also cannot schedule a cloping shift or when employees both work a closing an opening shift unless the worker consents in writing receives a $100 premium to work that shift.
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Furthermore, fast food employers cannot fire or reduce the hours of a worker by more than 15% without just cause.
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Under the retail and utility, safety worker provisions of the law.
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Employers must also give workers 72 hours of advance notice of work schedules and may not schedule workers for on call shifts or change worker schedules with less than 72 hours of notice.
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Since the Fair Work Week law went into effect in November of 2017, DCWP has received more than 500 fair work week complaints, open more than 250 investigations, and obtain resolutions require over 25,000,000 in combined fines and restitution for more than 17,000 workers.
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As one of the most comprehensive fair scheduling laws of its kind, New York City's Fair Workweek law now serves as a model for local government leaders across the country.
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These are obviously incredibly important metrics that I just mentioned, but we must also remain vigilant to ensure workers and employers are aware of their rights and obligations under the law and that DCWP is conducting investigations in a timely manner, and that's gonna be one of the topics of today's hearing.
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The average number of days it has taken DCWP to resolve fair work week complaints has increased from 64 days in 2018 to 345 days in 2022.
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One example reported in the New York Times back in February found that there were Starbucks workers who had reported violations of the Fair Workweek law with reduced shift and irregular schedules.
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And that will also be a subject of the some of the questioning because we found that there were workers 76 different complainants and over 56 different Starbucks stores, so we will obviously be talking about that.
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In addition to taking longer for the agency to resolve complaints in 2022, fewer fare work we complaints came to DCWP than prior to the pandemic, and the agency opened fewer investigations than they did before the pandemic.
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In addition, as of 2022, DCWP had received no utility safety employee complaints related to Fair Work Week and open no investigations of such employers under the law.
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Committee looks forward to hearing from DCWP and other stakeholders about the city's enforcement of the Fair Work Week Law and its efforts to hold employers accountable and help ensure fairness and justice for working families across our city.
