LA City Council considers ordinance to add protections for 70K retail workers

Come spring, about 70,000 retail and grocery workers in Los Angeles might see more predictable work schedules and other workers’ protections if a Fair Work Week ordinance the City Council is considering on Tuesday, Nov. 22, is approved.

Under the proposal, retail businesses within the city of L.A., and with more than 300 employees globally – such as Kroger-owned grocery stores, Trader Joe’s, Target, CVS and Rite Aid – would have to give workers at least 14 days of advance notice of their work schedules, provide “predictability pay” by compensating them with extra pay for last-minute schedule changes or partial pay for reducing their hours, and allow employees to decline working extra hours if they were given short notice.

The ordinance would also require employers to provide employees with a “good faith estimate” of their work hours before they’re hired and require businesses to first offer additional work hours, when available, to existing employees before hiring or contracting with new workers.

Further, the ordinance would guarantee that employees get at least 10 hours between shifts – or be compensated with extra pay – in hope of discouraging employers from scheduling an employee to work a late closing shift one night and an early opening shift the next morning, a practice known as “clopening.”

“As we enter the holiday shopping season, we are reminded of our responsibility to support and protect our retail and grocery workers,” Curren Price, among the councilmembers who introduced the ordinance, said in a statement.

“We must recognize the gaps and wide range of concerns faced by workers and put their needs over the profits of corporations,” Price stated. “These new regulations will provide employees – many of whom are people of color and live paycheck to paycheck – predictability, stability and flexibility in their work schedules, while demonstrating respect and appreciation for them and their families. Besides being the right thing to do, these protections will make it easier for Angelenos to balance their family and work lives, and to plan ahead.”

First introduced in 2019, the ordinance was drafted in response to a 2018 UCLA Labor Center study, written in collaboration with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, that found unstable work hours and weeks among the vast majority of retail workers in L.A.

Since then, many of these retail workers, including grocery workers, have been hailed as heroes for working the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of the more than 140,000 retail workers in L.A., the UCLA study found, 77% received no more than one week’s notice of their schedules, with the majority experiencing last-minute scheduling changes, including cancellation of hours they were to work which resulted in unstable income, or in the case of last-minute shift changes, difficulty finding child care or, for students, being forced to miss classes. Forty-four percent of workers surveyed said their work hours fluctuated by more than 10 hours week-to-week.

The proposed Fair Work Week ordinance would address such issues, advocates say. Similar ordinances have passed in places like San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Philadelphia and Oregon, they noted.

But some business organizations previously raised concerns about the proposal in L.A., including the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the California Grocers Association.

Sarah Pollo, communications director for the California Retailers Association, said in an email Monday that while the association “appreciated” the council’s willingness to postpone implementing the policy by three months, to April 1, 2023, and allowed a 15-day period for noncompliant businesses to correct their practices after hearing from the association, other concerns were not resolved.

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For example, the association believes that the 15-minute grace period before employers must provide “predictability pay” should be extended to at least 60 minutes.

The ordinance must be approved by 12 councilmembers on Tuesday to be adopted immediately. Should there not be 12 councilmembers at the meeting, but the majority of those present votes for the ordinance, it would return for a second vote next week.

Supporters of the ordinance plan on holding a press conference outside of City Hall on Tuesday morning ahead of the vote.