San Francisco and NYC retail and restaurant sectors are beginning to see the ugly side of socialism: store closures and layoffs, as their owners cannot keep up with local government mandates that raise the costs of their businesses.
Socialism is in fashion again in America. At the local level that is, where governments have been passing mandates that tell corporations how to run their businesses.
Like the “Fair Workweek” laws. These laws require employers to prepare working schedules for their employees ahead of time.
That’s on top of minimum wage mandates, which tells employers how to pay their employees.
The Fair Week mandate hits restaurants and retailers particularly hard, a sector which employs a large number of hourly-paid workers.
In theory, this mandate is a good thing. It addresses the unpredictable nature of employment in these two industries.
“Retail and restaurant employees are often victims of erratic work schedules,” says Krista Hardwick, in-house legal counsel, at Deputy. “These hourly paid workers are typically scheduled with only a few days-notice, sent home early from shifts without warning, not paid properly for working overtime or during breaks — which means they can’t properly plan childcare or coordinate with other part-time jobs accordingly.”
The Fair Workweek laws are designed to solve this problem. “They enforce fair scheduling practices to ensure workers have ample notice (typically two weeks) of their schedules and paid accurately and on time for their work,” Hardwick says. “As the name suggests, Fair Workweek laws aim to make unpredictable scheduling practices tenfold more fair — and predictable — so that workers can manage their lives outside of shiftwork more easily.”
That’s the pretty side of socialism.
In practice, however, things are different. Implementing a fair workweek is a complex task, according to Hardwick. “As fair as the laws are for workers, they are incredibly lengthy and complex, and national food and retail chains with hundreds of locations across the country have as much trouble implementing them as more localized chains,” she says.
Read the rest at: Socialism in all its glory
