(April 30, 2007) Note: The following letter was sent to Assemblyman Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland), chairman of the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee, on April 25, in response to the committee’s 3-5 vote rejecting the California Chamber of Commerce-sponsored flexible workweek bill, AB 510 (Benoit; R-Bermuda Dunes).
Dear Chairman Swanson:
Wednesday, April 18, I had the opportunity to testify before your Committee on Labor and Employment, urging you and your members to support AB 510, Assemblymember Benoit’s bill providing much needed, and wanted, flexibility in scheduling workdays for individual employees. I appreciated the time that you gave to each of us who spoke on behalf of this important bill.
Needless to say, I was dismayed with the outcome. With one exception, the vote was strictly by party line with the Democrats voting against (except for Assemblymember Galgiani) and the Republicans voting in support of this bill. The union, of course, was quite vocal, stating that additional flexibility wasn’t needed. Really, it is quite interesting to see them take positions against employees when they spend so much time and money alleging that they support them.
You see, as I said to you during my presentation, this bill is all about the employee. It is individual employees who are asking for flexibility in scheduling their workday because they do want or need more personal time. Study after study has shown that our new generations, Generation Xers and Ys, want more time away from work to spend with family and friends. They want time for other activities, whether attending school, caring for children or parents, or just spending time on hobbies, long weekends, travel and relaxing. Why would you be opposed to providing the flexibility that they ask for?
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| Ruth Evans |
One of your members (Assemblymember Leno) and certainly the unions, stated that the alternative workweek option provides all the flexibility needed. That is not true. The alternative workweek provides
some flexibility for companies that can organize into work units, departments, groups, shifts — but it does not provide flexibility for
individual employees.
Small employers, in particular, have employees asking for the opportunity to work 10-hour days, four days a week. Retail clerks, wait staff, hotel clerks, and other
individual employees of small businesses and in particular small mom-and-pop operations, want this flexibility.
Rather than forcing employers to create some magical “unit” to allow one or two people the flexibility they desire, and/or need due to personal circumstances, why not provide them with the flexibility?
If you have a sandwich shop with four counter clerks and one wants to work four 10-hour days, why should the employer have to take it to a vote? And more importantly, why should all four counter workers have to work the same schedule?
The reason they have to take a two-thirds vote is because they all have to switch to the new schedule if it passes.
Why shouldn’t we let the one worker who wants a 4-10 workweek work it out directly and individually?
(The answer is that the unions don’t want to empower individual employees to negotiate directly with their employer — that’s what unions are for.)
If two-thirds of those employees vote NO, then the one individual who wanted or needed that schedule loses.
My takeaway from this experience is that the outcome was pre-ordained when we walked into the room, and that unions really are pretty much in control.
Why should they have such a big voice in representing non-union employees? What a shame when they represent such a small portion of working men and women in California. It is not the unions who create the jobs; it is the employers.
All we were asking for was the opportunity to meet the requests of
individual employees who want flexibility in scheduling their workday.
Ruth Evans is the owner of The Evans HR GROUP, Fresno, a full-service HR management company providing HR consulting including policy development, recruiting, training, and counseling for companies throughout California.