SB 878: Work hours: scheduling.

Existing law governs the relationship between an employer and an employee with regard to hiring, promotion, discipline, wages and hours, working conditions, and administrative and judicial remedies. Existing law authorizes the Labor Commissioner to investigate employee complaints and to conduct a hearing in any action to recover wages, penalties, and other demands for compensation.

This bill would require an employer, which includes a grocery store establishment, restaurant, or retail store establishment, to provide its employees with a work schedule at least 7 calendar days prior to the first shift on that work schedule, except as specified. The bill would require an employer, except as specified, to pay its employees modification pay for each previously scheduled shift that the employer cancels or moves to another date or time, for any previously unscheduled shift that the employer requires an employee to work, or for each on-call shift for which an employee is required to be available but is not called in to work that shift. The bill would require an employer to post a poster containing specified information regarding an employees right to receive modification pay and would require the Labor Commissioner to create the poster and make it available. The bill would define terms for those purposes, including, among others, a grocery store establishment, restaurant, or retail store establishment.

The bill would require the Labor Commissioner to enforce these requirements, including the investigation, mitigation, and relief of violations of these requirements. The bill would authorize the Labor Commissioner to impose specified administrative fines for violations and would authorize the commissioner, the Attorney General, an employee or person aggrieved by a violation of these provisions, or an entity a member of which is aggrieved by a violation of these provisions to recover specified civil penalties against an offender who violated these provisions on behalf of the aggrieved, as well as attorneys fees, costs, and interest.

The bill would not apply to certain categories of employees who meet specified requirements.