‘Secure scheduling’ is a labor scam and Seattle Council is complicit

Today, the Seattle City Council passed the toughest-in-the-nation secure-scheduling legislation that is so transparently pro-Labor Union that it should border on criminal. That your elected officials care more about answering to union campaign support than to you, the constituents, is sickening.

As we reported, the new law would give workers at big retailers, coffee chains and restaurants two weeks advance notice of work schedules. Additionally, any changes by an employer will result in the worker getting extra pay. There would also have to be a minimum of 10 hours between shifts, cutting down on employees who volunteer for these schedules and employers would have to offer any available hours to existing employees before hiring more people.

Related: Is there an exodus of low-wage workers from Seattle?

The language and mechanisms of the bill make it purposefully onerous on businesses. So onerous that it might be more convenient and cheaper to hire union workers. Why? Because union-backed businesses get a special exemption from the law, even if through collective bargaining the secure-scheduling alternative offers fewer protections to the workers. If this were about helping workers, the union wouldn’t get a pass.

But this was never about helping workers; this was about helping the union and their dwindling membership. Indeed, the majority of retail workers in Seattle are not employees of the businesses impacted by this legislation. Costco, a business that activists usually point to as a beacon of progressive business values, is decidedly against this law. Starbucks has indicated the legislation includes “unworkable solutions.”

This was another tool for unions to go after companies like Starbucks and McDonalds. It’s why union-front Working Washington organized workers to flood council meetings to speak in favor of legislation the union would ultimately benefit most from.

There wasn’t a groundswell of workers calling for this, it was a contrived exploitation of low-wage workers by a union movement in disarray. From the New York Times:

Gary N. Chaison, an industrial relations professor at Clark University, said: “Unions are thrashing around looking for answers. It just might prove successful from the very fact that there is great desperation to it. There’s a sense that this is make-or-break time for labor. Either major things are done, or it will be too late to resuscitate the labor movement.”

It is make-or-break time for the union. It’s a good thing they have shills in the Seattle City Council to throw them a bone at the expense of businesses and workers.

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