CPD IN THE NEWS

New York Times - July 15, 2014, by Steve Greenhouse - As more workers find their lives upended and their paychecks reduced by ever-changing, on-call schedules, government officials are trying to put limits on the harshest of those scheduling practices.

The actions reflect a growing national movement — fueled by women’s and labor groups — to curb practices that affect millions of families, like assigning just one or two days of work a week or requiring employees to work unpredictable hours that wreak havoc with everyday routines like college and child care.

The recent, rapid spread of on-call employment to retail and other sectors has prompted proposals that would require companies to pay employees extra for on-call work and to give two weeks’ notice of a work schedule.

Vermont and San Francisco have adopted laws giving workers the right to request flexible or predictable schedules to make it easier to take care of children or aging parents. Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller, is pressing the City Council to take up such legislation. And last month, President Obama ordered federal agencies to give the “right to request” to two million federal workers.

The new laws and proposals generally require an employer to discuss a new employee’s situation and to consider scheduling requests, but they do not require companies to accommodate individual schedules. Many businesses have opposed these measures, arguing that they represent improper government intrusion into private operations.

In a referendum last year, voters in SeaTac, Wash. — the community near Seattle that also passed the nation’s highest minimum wage, $15 an hour for some workers — approved a measure that bars employers from hiring additional part-time workers if any of their existing part-timers want more hours. The move was a response to complaints from workers that they were not scheduled for enough hours to support their families. Some San Francisco lawmakers are seeking to enact a similar regulation.

Representative George Miller of California, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, plans to introduce legislation this summer that would require companies to pay their employees for an extra hour if they were summoned to work with less than 24 hours’ notice. He is also proposing a guarantee of four hours’ pay on days when employees are sent home after just a few hours — something that happens in many restaurants and retailers when customer traffic is slow.

That happened to Mary Coleman. After an hourlong bus commute, she arrived at her job at a Popeyes in Milwaukee only to have her boss order her to go home without clocking in — even though she was scheduled to work. She was not paid for the day.

“It’s becoming more and more common to put employees in a very uncertain and tenuous position with respect to their schedules, and that ricochets if workers have families or other commitments,” Mr. Miller said. “The employer community always says it abhors uncertainty and unpredictability, but they are creating an employment situation that has huge uncertainty and unpredictability for millions of Americans.”

While Mr. Miller acknowledges that his bill is unlikely to be enacted anytime soon — partly because of opposition from business (and a Republican-controlled House), he said the bill would bring attention to what he called often callous scheduling practices. His bill, similar to one in the Senate sponsored by Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, has a “right to request” provision that would bar employers from denying requests from workers with caregiving or school-related conflicts unless they had a “bona fide” business reason.

Corporate groups protest that such measures undercut efficiency and profits. “The hyper-regulation of the workplace by government isn’t conducive to a positive business climate,” said Scott DeFife, an executive vice president of the National Restaurant Association. “The more complications that government creates for operating a business, the less likely we’ll see a positive business environment that’s good for the economy and increasing jobs.”

Mr. DeFife pointed out that the daily ebb and flow of customers necessitated flexibility in scheduling.

David French, a senior vice president of the National Retail Federation, said many people chose careers in retail because of the flexible work hours.

“These proposals may sound reasonable, but if you unpack them, they could be very harmful,” Mr. French said. “Where employers and employees now work together to solve scheduling problems, you’ll have a very bureaucratic environment where rigid rules would be introduced.”

While many of these workers are not unionized, the labor movement has often battled against part-time work and ever-changing schedules. But as unions have grown weaker, employers have felt freer to employ part-timers and use more volatile scheduling. Unions still push for workers to get more hours — and those pressures are one reason Macy’s and Walmart have adopted programs letting employees claim additional, available shifts by going onto their employers’ websites.

In a climate where many retailers, restaurants and other businesses are still struggling after the recession, economists point to the increased uncertainty faced by employees. About 27.4 million Americans work part time. The number of those part-timers who would prefer to work full time has nearly doubled since 2007, to 7.5 million. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 47 percent of part-time hourly workers ages 26 to 32 receive a week or less of advance notice for their schedule.

In a study of the data, two University of Chicago professors found that employers dictated the work schedules for about half of young adults, without their input. For part-time workers, schedules on average fluctuated from 17 to 28 hours a week.

“Frontline managers face pressure to keep costs down, but they really don’t have much control over wages or benefits,” said Susan J. Lambert, a University of Chicago professor who interpreted the data. “What they have control over is employee hours.”

Ms. Lambert said flexible, not rigid or unpredictable, hours would become as important an issue as paid family leave. “The issue of scheduling is going to be the next big effort on improving labor standards,” she said. “To reduce unpredictability is important to keep women engaged in the labor force.”

David Chiu, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, has created a business-labor group that is trying to find the middle ground.

“We’ve learned that predictability in hours is important not just to help workers juggle their lives, but for economic security — to help workers take a second job to live in expensive cities like San Francisco or New York,” Mr. Chiu said. “We’re confident that we can move forward with policies that work for workers as well as business’s bottom line.”

Sharlene Santos says her part-time schedule at a Zara clothing store in Manhattan — ranging from 16 to 24 hours a week — is not enough. “Making $220 a week, that’s not enough to live on — it’s not realistic,” she said.

After Ms. Santos and four other Zara workers recently wrote to the company, protesting that they were given too few hours and received just two days’ notice for their schedule, the company promised to start giving them two weeks’ advance notice.

Fatimah Muhammad said that at the Joe Fresh clothing store where she works in Manhattan, some weeks she was scheduled to work just one day but was on call for four days — meaning she had to call the store each morning to see whether it needed her to work that day.

“I felt kind of stuck. I couldn’t make plans,” said Ms. Muhammad, who said she was now assigned 25 hours a week.

A national campaign — the Fair Workweek Initiative — is pushing for legislation to restrict these practices in places including Milwaukee, New York and Santa Clara, Calif. The effort includes the National Women’s Law Center, the United Food and Commercial Workers union and the Retail Action Project, a New York workers’ group.

“Too many workers are working either too many or too few hours in an economy that expects us to be available 24/7,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative and an organizer at the Center for Popular Democracy, a national advocacy group. “It’s gotten to the point where workers, especially women workers, are saying, ‘We need a voice in how much and when we work.' ”

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The protesters’ action at the Republican retreat was organized by the Center for Popular Democracy Action, in coordination with local affiliates.

Read the full article here.

The Inquirer - March 5, 2015, by Joseph DiStefano - Ten cold protesters from a national group called Fed Up gathered at the Federal Reserve of Philadelphia in the storm this afternoon to urge the Fed to pay more attention to boosting employment and listening to groups representing wage workers and poor people.

The group, which includes labor union and church groups as well as local affilates such as North Philadelphia-based Action United, says its national leaders met with Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen in Washington last year, but they have had a tough time getting Fed officials who oversee regional banks and regulatory teams, such as Charles Plosser, the free-market economist who retired in January as the Philly Fed President, to take them seriously. Other Fed Up affilates held protests in New York, Charlotte, St. Louis, and other Fed cities today. More are planned, said Shawn Sebastian of the liberal, Brooklyn-based Center for Popular Democracy, one of the groups supporting Fed Up.

"Plosser never gave us a meeting," said Action United leader Kendra Brooks, who said she's been organziing poor people to press for improved government job, education and housing programs since she was laid off from her management job at an Easter Seals affiliate in 2012. Herb Taylor, a veteran community-development manager for the Philly Fed, and other local Fed officials did meet with a Fed Up delegation last fall, and Philly Fed leaders have also held meetings with labor unions and community groups, Fed spokesman Jim Ely reminded the group.

"But they gave us crumbs," said Brooks, noting that labor and community-group leaders were not part of the inner circle who selected Plosser's replacement, University of Delaware President Patrick Harker, a Philly Fed board member who will take the top Philly Fed job in July. 

Under Ed Boehne, Philadelphia Fed President from the 1970s into the 1990s, the Philly Fed forced banks to expand their inner-city direct-lending programs and ensured labor representation on the Fed board.  

Brooks questioned whether Boehne's successors share that committment to listening to and serving all sectors. She said corporate executives like Comcast chief financial officer Michael Angelakis and investor James Nevels, who led the committee that chose Harker, don't represent a wide range of residents of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve district, which covers eastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey and Delaware.

"Comcast does not represent our community, the universities do not represent the community. We need our voices to be heard, also," she said.

Group leaders said they are frustrated the Fed has not pushed banks to be more flexible in setting payment terms for stressed homeowners, or show the forebearance banks often show to troubled corporate borrowers.

Action United member Lionel Rice said he's running out of time. He said he hadn't been able to find a job paying more than fast-food wages since he was laid off after 20 years at the Penn Maid dairy plant in Northeast Philadelphia three years ago. He said a housing finance agency is preparing to foreclose on his home in Olney.

Ely said he would bring the group's petition to Fed officials' attention. 

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New York Times - December 17, 2013, by Kirk Semple - In 1885, as new engineering inventions were ushering in the era of the skyscraper, lawmakers in New York State enacted a law intended to safeguard construction workers who were finding themselves facing increasing dangers while working at ever-greater heights.

That measure, which became known as the Scaffold Law, required employers on building sites to ensure the safety of laborers working above the ground. Since then, some form of the legislation has remained on the books despite repeated attempts to repeal it.

But a lobby of contractors, property owners and insurers has in recent months renewed a campaign against the law, arguing that no less than the future of the state’s construction industry is at stake.

They argue that the law is antiquated and prejudicial against contractors and property owners, and essentially absolves employees of responsibility for their own accidents, leading to huge settlements. The payouts, they contend, have in turn led to skyrocketing insurance premiums that are hampering construction and the state’s economic growth.

On Tuesday, a coalition of contractors, including a newly formed alliance of firms owned by women and minorities, announced the start of an advertising and lobbying blitz in Albany and New York City. But a counter-lobby of unions, workers’ advocates and trial lawyers is pushing back just as fiercely. The law, they argue, is essential to ensuring the safety of workers in some of the world’s most dangerous jobs, particularly those employed by shoddy contracting firms that cut corners to save money. The law, they say, holds developers and contractors accountable for keeping job sites safe.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo this week acknowledged the politically loaded atmosphere surrounding the Scaffold Law, but suggested that he was open to the possibility of modifying the law.

The law states that contractors and property owners are responsible for ensuring that scaffolds, hoists and other devices that enable aboveground building construction and repair “shall be constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to a person so employed.”

When injuries result from a violation of those terms, the law says, contractors and owners are liable. There is no mention of worker responsibility. Under the law, however, the plaintiff still must show that a violation of the law’s standards occurred and that the violation caused the injury.

But those seeking to change the law want to incorporate a standard of “comparative negligence.” This amendment — described in a state bill submitted earlier this year — would require a jury or arbiter to consider whether the liability of the defendants, and thus the amount of damages, should be reduced for cases in which the worker’s negligence or failure to follow safety procedures contributed to the accident.

Opponents argue that the amendment would reduce the incentive for the property owner and contractors to take necessary safety precautions.

“This law protects both union and nonunion workers and creates a sense of accountability on these job sites,” said Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, an umbrella group for unionized construction workers. “If the law was modified, the workers would lose their voice.”

But those seeking to alter the law say the amendment would not eliminate the owners’ and contractors’ motivation to keep their workplaces safe because they would still face the possibility of shouldering large payouts, even if they were found only partly responsible for an accident.

“The notion that a contractor or owner would want to do anything to undermine the safety of the worker on the job doesn’t make sense,” said Pamela Young, associate general counsel of the American Insurance Association.

Workers’ advocates argue that erosion of the Scaffold Law would have a disproportionate impact on minority and immigrant laborers, who, the advocates say, are more likely to work for nonunion companies that may not provide proper safety training and equipment.

Immigrants, the advocates said, are less likely to speak the same language as their bosses on a job site and more likely to fear being fired if they demand a safer workplace.

From 2003 to 2011, federal safety regulators investigated 136 falls “from elevation” that killed workers on construction sites in New York, according to a recent report by Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group. Of those workers, about 60 percent were Latino, foreign-born or both. That rate rose to 88 percent among fatal falls in New York City.

Some trial lawyers have been effective at using the law to secure large settlements. Of the 30 largest settlements in 2012, at least 14 were in cases brought under state labor laws and most of those involved falls from ladders or scaffolding, according to The New York Law Journal. The awards ranged from $3 million to $15 million.

Weislaw, a Polish immigrant, was the plaintiff in a liability case that was settled last month. (He spoke on the condition that his surname not be used in this article, out of concern for his privacy.) He had been part of a crew repairing the roof of a one-story public school building in Long Beach, on Long Island. While he was working on the roof one spring day in 2010, he was concentrating so hard on his task that he lost track of the edge of the roof and fell, he said, suffering multiple fractures.

“I will most likely never be able to return to work,” he said.

Weislaw filed a lawsuit under the Scaffold Law arguing that he had not been provided with proper protection, such as a safety line or a spotter.

The case settled for $2.7 million, said David Scher, a lawyer from the firm that represented him.

Critics of the Scaffold Law say the way it is written makes these sorts of cases easy to win.

“It’s a gold mine for the plaintiffs’ bar,” said Mike Elmendorf, president and chief executive of Associated General Contractors of New York State. “When you get one of these cases, it’s largely about how much it’s going to cost.”

These high payouts, he and others contend, have driven up insurance rates, knocking smaller contractors, particularly those run by minorities and women, out of business and forcing others to suspend work, costing thousands of jobs.

They argue that the impact is as high on government projects as it is on private ones, and that the soaring cost of liability insurance is forestalling the repair and construction of public works projects, such as schools, bridges and roads. The New York City School Construction Authority said in a statement on Monday that its liability insurance costs for 2014 would be nearly as much as those for the three-year period from 2011 to 2013.

But in recent weeks, the law’s defenders have employed a new gambit, demanding that the insurance companies open their accounting ledgers to prove whether the Scaffold Law is, in fact, responsible for the rate increases. Insurance executives have vowed to fight any demands to disclose proprietary information that might somehow undermine their competitive advantages.

State Assemblyman Francisco P. Moya, a Democrat who represents a heavily immigrant and Latino area of Queens, said he planned to submit a bill that would expand reporting requirements for insurance companies and help lawmakers assess whether the Scaffold Law needed to be changed.

“Show us how much the payouts are,” Mr. Moya said. “Once we see that, we’ll have a better understanding.”

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