I want to be pro-worker here. But I've heard enough cringeworth speech from Councilmember Gonzales to make me be at least cautious to outright opposed to any legislation the council is bringing forward on this.

Yes. Minimum 1 week notice for schedule changes sounds like a great idea. As long as you think up the details and future business models you'll kill. This could be anti-worker in the same way requiring minimum housing square feet can be anti-housing (it's a great idea until suddenly you've priced people out of a home).

But what really scares me is the minimum 12 hours off between shifts. There goes half the nannies and before/after care school workers in the city. Oh wait, or the argument is we should be hiring 2 of each of these workers. For 2-4 hour shifts each.

Then you get to the statements that there shouldn't be part-time work - everyone deserves full time employment. So take those 2 nannies and child care workers and pay them full time at $15 an hour.

And if you think that will happen without anyone losing their job, well tell me how. And when you've figured that out, tell me how you get places like Casa Latina, the Millionaire's Club, etc. to work.

Reading my comment over, I sound pretty anti-worker-rights. I really do think ideas like 1-week advanced notice for schedule changes are a good idea. I'm just saying I'll need to see the language of the legislation - there's a lot of ways to screw up people's lives with these policies.

Casa Latina workers are guaranteed at least 5 hrs work each time you hire them, often you call before 10am and schedule for the next day, and most of the jobs are during regular working hours when their kids can be at school, and the workers can just sign up to work the same shift each time so they can stagger shifts with their spouses/roommates so someone is home with the kids. This isn't the case with MANY retail and restaurant businesses that reserve the rights to schedule their workers for any shift AND send their workers home if they feel business is "slow", so you can be scheduled for 8 hours, pay for 8 hr care for your kids, and then get sent home after only a couple hours! Places like Nordstrom did this even with their full-time employees (when I worked there in college, don't know if they still do this or not). This is the worst of all the abuses because the poor employees can never be sure that they will get enough hours to pay their bills in any given month. And if their schedule change week to week then they can't work a second job to pay the bills if there's not enough hours at the first job. On top of this these employers always hire too many employees so they can have choices and flexibility, so there's not full time work for most of the workers. This is why people getting evicted from their apartments have become a major problem now. Employers have too much power these days, really people can actually get better predictability and guarantees in schedule and pay by working for a temp agency instead of getting a permanent job that won't guarantee a schedule, shift, or hours.

As for nannies, sounds like you're able to find nannies who are willing to work only a few hours each day where you are, but around here the only way that happens is if you have other families you can arrange a nanny share with, or you've struck lucky with a very responsible college kid. My friend's nanny graduated last spring, and it took 5 months to find another for their kids, even though they had a nanny share agreement with the family next door so the nanny was guaranteed 7 hours per day (with a split shift where she goes to school in between). She and her husband had to take turn working at home while they searched desperately for months., lucky they have jobs that allowed this! Before her kids were old enough for school, she paid $30,000/yr AND health insurance for her kids' nanny through one of the nanny companies here. Another friend had to hire au pairs: $8/hr on top of room/board/plane tickets and health insurance. Daycare centers run 1,500/month PER KID so still cheaper unless you only have one kid.

Responsible companies like Costco and those of other developed countries don't seem to have a problem treating their workers as human beings who need to eat, sleep, pay rent and have children. If other companies can't then isn't it one of the defining tenets of free market capitalism that they need to clear out and make place for better companies that can? All the companies that whine and demand tax breaks like Boeing shouldn't be in those businesses since they claim they can't survive without billions $ of help from the rest of us!

Uh... Duh?

Matt, we should be able to define "shift" (by length) such that split shift isn't prohibited. It is worth keeping an eye out for unintended consequences, yeah, but I think you kind of drifted by accident into strawman argumentation there.

Do you have a type of business model in mind, that would require hours that can't be known ahead? (But requiring employer control of hours, not piecework.). Or more general who knows what the future may hold?

@5 A little of both. Take Casa Latina in Iseult's example. Often they're used as fill-in workers, where knowing exactly how much labor you'll need a week ahead of time is difficult/impossible. Other current examples off the top of my head: Uber drivers, on-call workers, or any job that involves deadlines (sorry, you should have let me know a week ago - I'm out of here).

Anyway, there are solutions to all of these cases. But involves less efficiency and more cost. My nanny case was intentionally extreme - it involves cost-sensitive employers that may just eliminate the jobs (and one of their own) if costs grow too much or restrictions are too tight. If there are workers that want these jobs and are willing to work with those hours, why exactly are we saying they can't take that job?

With regard to the vague future cases: I do see a lot of new work models that use apps as potentially having non-standard hours. And if would-be employees choose this work who are we to tell them they're wrong?

I would be on board if we could perhaps create something akin to the FLSA/FLSA Exempt categories. Obviously there is need for part time jobs- people often have competing obligations, such as other jobs, school, children, medical issues or whatever. Obviously there is also need for short-term work, on-call work, and emergency fill-in. So long as the terms are fair and mutually agreed upon, there is no reason these can't be accommodated. But employers are often abusive.