"Can you come in for an extra shift tomorrow?"

Oregon legislators debate "predictive scheduling".  The joys and perils of knowing your work schedule in advance.

Democrats are under pressure from their own progressive flank.  They are urged to "man up" and oppose Trump and Trump-ism and Republicans generally more aggressively than Hillary did.  One of the messages that Democrats think they learned from Hillary's loss is that a centrist candidate like Hillary is less motivating than a strong, vivid one that excites base voters.  And Hillary was a compromiser, too close to the powerful corporate interests that are the natural ally of Republicans.

Headline, Portland Tribune

The Gorsuch nomination for the Supreme Court is an artifact of that push.  Sanders-Democrats use words about Hillary-Democrats like "weak" and "corrupted" and "sold out" and "corporate" and those Democrats are criticized by activists and donors they count on.  They feel more pressure to look strong than they feel to look cooperative and bi-partisan and reasonable.  So Democrats are going to force a "nuclear option" decision on the Republicans, perhaps ending the Senate filibuster rule forever.

(The Republicans went through the same thing in 2009 and 2010 after McCain lost big to Obama.  Republicans felt pressure from the Tea Party right, and Republicans with safe bright red districts lost their seats in primaries, c.f. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Bob Bennett of Utah.  Voters thought they were too soft, too bi-partisan.)

The issue in Oregon is "predictive scheduling", which means that employees need to be told their schedules in advance by at least two weeks.   If an employee is scheduled, but told not to come to work, he gets paid anyway, and if a person is called in to work on short notice of less than two weeks then the employee must be paid time and a half.  Here is a news story on the subject:   Portland Tribune story

From an employee's point of view one can see the benefit, at least at first glance.  Particularly in an economy moving toward "gig employment" in which workers don't have one big permanent full time job but rather an assortment of part time jobs then having a predictable schedule is helpful. You know when you are free to work elsewhere.  It is also useful--and sometimes critical--when an employee needs to arrange day care.  There is an element of fairness at work here: if an employer says that the employee has a Friday noon-to-eight shift then that employee is not free to schedule that time elsewhere and may have made firm arrangements with a day care provider for that period, so if the employers says "never mind, don't come to work" the worker was blocked from earning money both at the original employer and at the potential alternative.   It is, in fact, a real problem and undoubtably some employers are careless or cavalier.  I do not doubt there are jerk employers and horror stories to be told.

Another description of the proposal: Oregon Business

The Democrats have advanced a proposal which serves to protect that employee but there may be very little political room for Democrats to consider the other side of the equation without appearing to be "soft".  Some jobs are, by their nature, nearly impossible to schedule in advance.  Much construction, agricultural, forestry, landscaping, and maintenance work is weather-dependent or event-dependent.  Much of the hospitality industry deals on short notice response to the ebbs and flows of business.

A local restaurateur described a typical fact situation for his fine-dining restaurant.  A local corporate client calls on a Friday and says they would like to reserve three tables for a total of 18 guests for the upcoming Monday at 6:00 p.m.   The restaurant is typically slower on a Monday so the restauranteur makes telephone calls to one waiter, one cook, and one extra bus-person to ask if they want to come in to cover the busier than usual Monday.  Under the proposed new law each would be required to be paid time and a half, since it wasn't pre-scheduled.

Is that reasonable?  Well, it certainly changes the economics of the transaction for the restaurant.   At any given time some employees would be paid time and a half, others would be paid straight time for not showing up when not needed.  In fact one could predict three outcomes: generally higher restaurant prices, which patrons might or might not be willing to pay.  Service and customer experience would decline since there wold be frequent mis-matches between the work to be done and the staff to perform it.   But the bigger effect would be on the gig economy because the flexibility to call in employees as needed would be lost, and employers would begin re-organizing their businesses and use of labor to avoid the inevitable inefficiencies caused by predictive scheduling rules.

Washington Post article

The current situation is imperfect.  Some workers need predictability in scheduling, others do not. Presumably workers who need predictable schedules attempt to work in situations where predictable scheduling takes place, i.e. most indoor and office type jobs.  Workers who can accommodate unpredictable scheduling work in those situations and get paid a premium for their flexibility and ability to be there when there is work to be done.    

What about bad employers, who jerk employees around?  Employees quit them and find a better employer.  Employees know a bad employer when they experience them.

There is a presumption in the above paragraph: that employees and employers have more or less equal bargaining power and that employees can shop around to find a situation that works for them.  It assumes that abusive or unreasonable employers pay the price of having employees constantly quitting on them to go to better employers.  In the current environment locally, with some 4.5% unemployment, employers tell me that anyone who can pass a drug test can readily find work.  This is not always the case, however.

The proposed law gets down to a fundamental orientation about how the world works.  Does the free market for labor work well enough that government should not try to regulate this, or is the power of employers so much greater than employees that there needs to be some rules that reduce flexibility but protect the vulnerable?  And do there need to be some general guard rails for all employers so that abusive employers do not have an advantage over reasonable ones?

 Traditionally the Democratic Party has been more oriented toward protections (wages and hours rules, child labor rules, OSHA workplace safety, anti-discrimination rules) and the Republican Party has pushed against them.    Insofar as Trump represented a position on this he stood with businesses against regulation; he opposed Dodd Frank regulations on banking, EPA regulations on emissions, prohibitions on coal slurry being sloughed into rivers, etc.  That position had appeal with Republican voters.  I watched Republican crowds stand and cheer when Trump said he would fight the EPA and would abolish Dodd Frank regulations of banks.

The "predictive scheduling" proposal may have trouble being considered on its merits for the benefit--or in actuality long term injury--to workers in the modern economy.  Predictive scheduling confounds great tidal forces of just-in-time inventory planning and flexible "gig" employment.  Democrats may be on the wrong side of history here.  However, the issue may not be able to be considered from the view of what really benefits workers because the issue is being considered as corollaries of the big national polarity of Trump/Anti-Trump, Republican talking points vs. Democratic talking points.  The Republican crowds did not cheer the abolition of the EPA because they actually want polluted water; they cheered it because they have learned that "regulations are excessive" and that their team opposes regulations.   Democratic activists aren't thinking about whether getting a call from the restauranteur asking if they want to come in for a surprise Monday shift means a great tip opportunity and a big night; they are framing the debate as one of abusive employers versus a vulnerable employee and they are on the side of government protection of the vulnerable.  

The grass roots activists on both sides have drawn the lines: are you ideologically reliable or not?  Is the legislator pure or compromised?  The supposed value of representative democracy is that the people elect others who can provide nuance and wisdom to complex problems.  This is a complex problem, but nuance and wisdom may not be possible in the current environment.  The lines have been drawn.