FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
September 30, 2014
CONTACT:
Michelle Lim, Email: michelle@jwjsf.org, Cell: 480-363-9628
San Francisco, CA – Following the announcement by Supervisor David Chiu that he will propose a predictable scheduling and fair treatment ordinance for San Francisco’s hourly retail workers, San Francisco Jobs With Justice executive director Gordon Mar, who leads the Retail Workers Bill of Rights coalition, issued the following statement:
“Supervisor Chiu’s proposed ordinance represents an important step forward in addressing the critical issue of unpredictable schedules and harmful on-call practices impacting working people in our city.
In the past year, we’ve heard loud and clear from the community that a higher minimum wage is not enough to survive in San Francisco—people also need access to fair and predictable hours on the job.
Together with the growing movement of workers who are part of our coalition, we are committed to fighting for the strongest worker protection policies to make sure retail employees no longer have to put their life on hold for last minute schedule changes, cancelled shifts, and on-call shifts, without certainty about how many hours they will get from week to week. As the second piece of the Retail Workers Bill of Rights, this legislation demonstrates real progress in the fight to confront the sharp economic inequality plaguing too many people in our community.
We commend the leadership of Supervisors Chiu and Mar on this issue, as well as the work of the Predictable Scheduling Task Force, and are eager to work together to ensure that the final measure includes the strongest protections from each of the component bills, and reflects the best possible Retail Worker Bill of Rights . . I am proud of the role our coalition has played in this historic effort to make San Francisco the first jurisdiction in the country to create a comprehensive set of policies to address the growing problem of insufficient and unjust schedules in the workplace.”
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