Senator Cindy Friedman took part in an interview with Invested, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s new community development magazine, to discuss Senate Bill 1000, An Act establishing fair scheduling practices for employees in the Commonwealth.
“The bill addresses the issue of constantly changing work shift schedules,” said Senator Friedman. “The purpose of the bill is to create predictable schedules for workers. This has become an issue particularly in big-box stores and fast-food restaurants because of the availability of software that tracks moment-to-moment, day-to-day, and week-to-week sales and trends and allows an employer to change a shift schedule in a minute. We’ve worked on two different versions of the bill. The first version more broadly addressed all of the issues that come up because of just-in-time and on-call scheduling. The most recent version hones in on on-call scheduling and treats being on call the same as being physically present. The language that we filed this year basically says that if you’re on call, you get paid, because you can’t do anything else during the time you’re on call—you’re working. It’s only fair.”