San Francisco Employers Must Plan Around the Retail Workers Bill of Rights

San Francisco employers will need to take extra care with employee scheduling as they plan for the holidays and the busy shopping days ahead. The retail industry is often characterized by shifts assigned on short notice, scheduling workers with too few hours, treating part-time employees differently than full-time employees, and not compensating on-call employees, creating both practical and economic instabilities for workers in the industry. This year, the city of San Francisco, CA adopted the “Retail Workers Bill of Rights” aimed at stabilizing the work lives of most San Francisco retail employees.

The “Retail Workers’ Bill of Rights” refers to two City Formula Retail Employee Rights Ordinances that impose new obligations on retail employers to ensure that retail employees have more predictable and stable work schedules, that part-time employees are treated fairly and equally compared to their full-time counterparts, and to promote workforce stability and economic security by instituting an employee retention requirement when a business changes ownership.

The Ordinances apply to San Francisco employers that:

• own or operate a “formula retail establishment,” which includes retail companies, restaurants, banks, movie theaters, bars, and other businesses that fall under the definition of “formula retail use”;
• have at least 40 retail sales establishments worldwide; and
• employ at least 20 people in San Francisco.
• Janitorial and security contractors or subcontractors serving a covered employer’s San Francisco locations.

The Ordinances require covered employers to post the official Formula Retail Employee Rights poster available here. The poster describes five key points of the law and provides information for reporting violations or discrimination. The key areas are:

1. Additional hours – Before hiring new employees, employers must offer additional hours to part-time employees.
2. Scheduling – Employers must give two weeks’ notice of work schedules and provide “predictability pay” for schedule changes with less than one week’s notice.
3. Pay for on-call shifts.
4. Equal treatment for part-time employees in starting hourly wages, access to time off, and eligibility for promotions.
5. Retention – Employers must continue to employ all employees for 90 days if the business changes ownership.

The poster is in a 4-language format – English, Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog – so employers can meet the language requirements of their workforce and the law.