New York Investigation of On-Call Practices Raises Profile of Push for Increased Scheduling Rights

Employee Relations

Coinciding with a broader effort to give employees the statutory right to request flexible scheduling arrangements, this week the New York Attorney General launched an investigation of large retailers to determine if their scheduling and pay practices comply with state law.  Under New York's "reporting time" law, if an employee shows up for a shift that they do not end up being needed for, they must be paid for four hours of work.  A letter from State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that was sent to 13 national retailers claimed that on-call systems leave "too little time to make arrangements for family needs, let alone to find an alternative source of income to compensate for the lost pay" on days they aren't called into work.  Specifically, Mr. Schneiderman requested the retailers provide information about how they schedule employees, including whether they use certain software to schedule hours, or penalize employees who don't follow on-call procedures.  He is also seeking any analyses the firms have conducted about the impact of the scheduling policies on workers' well-being.  Labor and advocacy groups, who are pushing for scheduling rights legislation in Congress and at the state level, called the attorney general's investigation "the largest inquiry ever into the scheduling practices of the retail sector—historic in both scope and depth."  Meanwhile, several of the retailers denied that their practices violate the law, noting their commitment to "sustainable scheduling practices" and ensuring that those practices "are fair for all of our employees."