Last updated on September 9th, 2015 at 03:33 pm
A ballot initiative petition—“Fair Scheduling Initiative”—has been filed in Massachusetts that would require any fast food restaurant or retail store making changes, cancellations, additions or reductions to the schedule of an employee within 14 days of a scheduled shift to pay no less than one additional hour and no more than four additional hours in addition to wages earned for hours worked. This petition has been filed with the state attorney general.
Following certification, proponents of the measure must obtain 64,750 signatures from registered voters by Dec. 2, 2015. If those signatures are certified by the secretary of state, the legislature will have an opportunity to pass the measure by May 2016. If the legislature does not enact the petition, proponents will be required to obtain an additional 10,792 signatures of registered voters by July 2016 in order for the petition to be on the November 2016 ballot.
Bob Luz, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, expressed opposition of the measure in his monthly column in The Griffin Report.
He raised the following point: “Can you imagine setting schedules three weeks in advance, and having to pay for any changes at all to that schedule? One can only imagine what havoc would’ve been wreaked upon the restaurant industry had this been on the books this past February during the ‘snowmageddon month.’ We lost restaurants as it was; can anybody imagine what this would’ve done to those who struggled to survive and barely got through that period?”
