In 2004, the Governor attempted to initiate new regulations that would weaken workers' right to a break. Through organizing restaurant workers and joining with other labor and community groups, YWU helped defeat the draconian regulations!
What did the Governor try to do?
Current regulations make employers responsible for providing a 30-minute unpaid meal period after six hours of work, or paying an hour of wages for each missed lunch. Under this proposal, workers could be asked to waive their meal periods and work up to ten hours without a meal break. Workers would have to ASK for a break, not be legally entitled to one. Employers would only be responsible for posting a notice of the right to a break, not for actually providing one.
Why would the Governor want to end breaks?
The Governor could pay back his campaign supporters by getting them off the hook for millions of dollars of pending lawsuits by workers who didn't get a break.
Although employers still have to pay one hour of pay for each missed break, they would not have to pay "waiting time". Workers are entitled to waiting time for up to thirty days of waiting for all their wages. Say you didn't get breaks at a job where you were paid $10 per hour at 8 hour shifts. After thirty days of leaving that job, you would be owed $80 X 30 days, or $2400 PLUS all the break wages you didn't get. That's a pretty penny for a corporation that denied breaks to even a few workers. In addition, the Governor wanted to change the time you can claim from 3 years to 1 year AND within a year of their employer’s breaking the law. What a helping hand to corporations like Walmart and the Cheesecake Factory.
Who would the changes affect most?
California workers already experience widespread abuse of their right to meal breaks, and these regulations will only make it worse for the most vulnerable workers. Low-wage workers, immigrants, young workers, and women often don’t get breaks under the current rules, and encounter big barriers to getting justice through the legal system.
The key issue is protection from employers who are determined to cheat people out of breaks. Weakening the regulations further will encourage employers to break the law without risk. Allowing for breaks to be waived puts workers at risk of being understaffed or intimidated out of their meal periods.By reducing the potential liability, the new rules will decrease the incentive for employers to settle wage claims—and make it harder for workers to find lawyers to represent them.
How did the Governor ttry to do this?
In December, Schwarzenegger tried to sneak "emergency" regulations through as “emergency” changes with no public hearings. There was a pulic outcry. The Office of Administrative Law (OAL) reported getting more public comment in five days right before Christmas than it has on any other issue in its history. At the eleventh hour, the Governor rescinded the emergency order and accepted a longer public comment process.
The Division of Labor Standards and Enforcement (DLSE), who currently enforce labor law, undermined the democratic process by using taxpayer dollars on propaganda. Right before the series of three public hearings on the proposed regulations began, DLSE issued a "video news release" to television news shows promoting the proposed regulations. The video resembled a real news segment but was completely one-sided, featuring both Jose Millan who was one of the state officials taking public comment, and representatives of a Sacramento restaurant that it later turned out had violated the meal period law. The video has provoked critical editorials in a variety of major newspapers, lawsuits charging that it was illegal to spend public money on propaganda, and hearings at the Senate Budget Committee.
How did Young Workers United and other groups fight the regulations?
A DLSE panel held 3 public hearings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Fresno. Young Workers United helped organize a coalition that included the Day Labor Program, the San Francisco Bike Messengers Association, the San Francisco Labor Council, HERE Local 2, Asian Law Caucus, and UFCW Local 101, to bring 150 people who opposed the proposed regulations. Speakers representing a broad cross-section of ethnicities, industries, and constituencies talked about how negatively the regulations would affect them.
We also held a successful press conference that garnered coverage from Spanish and Chinese language media, KTVU Channel 2, KQED radio and others.
Tell us more of this slimy story...
Meanwhile, a group of white servers were paid by Outback Steakhouse to speak in support of the regulations who imported them from the suburbs. They failed to mention that six months ago, Outback was hit with a statewide class action for meal period violations, and had given over $50,000 to Republican causes in recent years. Proponents spoke only of the new for greater "flexibility" about when breaks would occur, but consistently failed to address the more serious questions of whether the unpaid breaks should be wages or penalties, or the inherent coercion of the proposed regulations.
For more information:
Here's a link to a recent online article by David Bacon, "No Rest for the Weary," posted on Truthout and Znet: http://www.zmag.org/conent/showarticle.cfm?sectionID+19&ItemID=7319
