Doing business in Seattle

More hassle for the employers - from The Seattle Times:

Seattle council unanimously approves ‘secure scheduling’ law for workers
The Seattle City Council unanimously passed a “secure scheduling” law that would make Seattle the second major city in the country to regulate how large retailers and food-service employers schedule their workers.

Just great - more regulatory burden for the small business owner. Just what we need. More:

The move again places Seattle at the forefront of a national movement on workers’ issues after the city passed, in 2014, a bill to gradually increase minimum wage in the city to $15 an hour.

And business started closing - they could not compete in the marketplace with the additional cost of labor. A lot of restaurants were affected buy this. More:

The law is expected to take effect in July and will apply to large retailers and quick-serve food and drink establishments with 500 or more workers, and to full-service restaurants with both 500 or more employees and 40 or more locations.

OK - so it is just hitting the big chains for now. What specifically does this law do?

Employers would be required to post work schedules two weeks in advance, give good-faith estimates of hours an employee can expect to work, schedule at least 10 hours rest between opening and closing shifts, give available hours to existing part-time employees before hiring new workers, and pay additional “predictability pay” when employers make changes to the posted schedule.

The proposed law also requires employers to keep records for three years, documenting everything from employers’ responses to employee requests for schedule changes, to good-faith estimates of the number of hours an employee could expect to work.

Just wonderful - a lot of extra record keeping. As for the part-time employees getting extra time - what if they are being given fewer hours because they are about to be fired or they do not work as well if they are on full time. This is just a big can of worms and nothing here benefits the business owner. This is being driven by the labor unions - there is a photo of the "protesters" at the Times and they were all carrying professionally designed and printed signs - this is astroturf, not grass roots.