FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
CONTACT: Gordon Mar, (415) 994-2496, gordon@jwjsf.org
San Francisco, Calif. – Today, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the Retail Workers Bill of Rights during its second and final vote on the measure. The package of legislation will help achieve fair scheduling and full-time work for 40,000 retail workers in the city.
Gordon Mar, executive director of Jobs With Justice San Francisco, issued the following statement: “This is an incredible victory for people in our city who are scraping by paycheck to paycheck and hour to hour. San Francisco is on its way to ensuring more men and women in our community have schedules and hours that allow them pay their bills, plan their lives and take care of their loved ones. Some of the policies passed today will be among the first of their kind in the country.”
Gordon Mar continued, “All families need strong wages, stable hours and sane schedules to build a good life. But too many of our neighbors who serve our food, stock our shelves and sweep our floors have jobs that grant too few hours on too short notice and require them to be at the beck and call of their employers.”
The Retail Workers Bill of Rights is a comprehensive set of policies introduced as two separate pieces of legislation by Supervisor Eric Mar and Supervisor David Chiu. Supervisor Mar’s piece will encourage full-time work and job security while Supervisor Chiu’s piece will mandate equal treatment for part-time workers and give workers more predictable schedules, including requiring 14 days’ advance notice of their schedules while discouraging last-minute schedule changes and abusive on-call shifts.
Access to additional hours and more stable schedules will make a significant difference to community members like Michelle Flores, who struggles to balance her time attending school while working part-time bagging groceries at a major chain to make ends meet. She explained, “now that this bill is going to pass, it will change my quality of life. I will be able to allocate more of the time I need in a much more orderly and systemic way. Having a more regular schedule will allow me to not only work for a living but also pursue my academic goals.”
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