Many of you were probably like me in that you had to work at least part-time while you were in college. At that time, I was lucky enough to have employees how were more than willing to create schedules that would work around my academic needs. Now, I understand that not all managers are as accommodating. Heck, nothing irritates me more than seeing retail workers having to work on Thanksgiving because companies believe that getting a jump on Black Friday sales is more important than having their employees spend time with family.
That being said, I am appalled by Suzanne Lucas’ report that the governing bodies of San Francisco, Vermont and the Obama administration (with respect to federal employees) have stepped in to give part-time workers the right to ‘request schedules’ that work around “such things as school, child care, and elder care”. Before you call me a jerk, let me elaborate why. If it were up to me, workers in this country would have every holiday off and stores would close no later than 7 pm Mon – Sat and would be closed on Sundays. Part-time workers would have pro-rata rights to benefits and all the other advantages of full-time employees. Yes, when it comes to workers’ rights I am quite liberal.
However, what I hate is government intruding on such a micro level into the operations of private enterprise. Now, I know to some extent this right to ‘request schedules’ is quite benign. After all, managers are only required to listen to employees’ requested schedules; they are not required to give them what they want. And, I agree with Ms. Lucas in that we are all human and we all have responsibilities outside of work, so it should not be too much for managers to create schedules “as far out as possible [that] makes life easier for people to make arrangements.” Of course, this should only be done if it is not detrimental to the company.
What Ms. Lucas and I are concerned about is that this is the start of a slippery slope of government intrusion into private industry that will sap all of the flexibility and dynamism out of American businesses. We already see a bit of this in happening in SeaTac, Washington, where the governing body there “is prohibiting employers from hiring additional part time workers when their current part time staff wants more hours.” As Ms. Lucas rightly notes, in some instances, this will kill “your flexibility and your budget.” For example:
“Two part time employees can work at the same time when demand is high, but one full time employee can only work one shift at a time. Additionally, what happens when your part time employees demand more hours and push above the 30 hour limit and now you've got to provide health insurance?”
For Ms. Lucas the solution is for you to (i) not be a jerk to your employees and (ii) this will make them happy so that (iii) they will not complain to the government. In so doing the government will have no reason to continue to intrude on business operations. While I agree in principle with the solution, the fact that we have to cower to the government in this particular situation somehow does not seem right to me. Please, let me know if I am being overly dramatic.
