New York Going Back to Drawing Board on Employee Scheduling Proposal
Author: Michael Cardman, XpertHR Legal Editor
March 4, 2019
After receiving extensive feedback from the business community, the New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) is abandoning its proposal for expanding the state's show-up time / reporting time requirements, which the NYSDOL refers to as "call-in pay."
In November 2017, the NYSDOL proposed new regulations that, if adopted, would have required employers to pay employees between two and four hours of call-in pay if they:
- Cancel shifts without a certain amount of notice;
- Require employees to be "on call" and available to report to work;
- Require employees to be in contact before a shift to find out whether to report to work for that shift; or
- Schedule a shift less than 14 days before the start of the shift.
After reviewing more than 600 comments on the November 2017 proposal, the NYSDOL made a number of employer-friendly revisions last year.
The NYSDOL again invited the public to provide comment on the revised proposal. The next round of comments revealed that significant issues remained, and the revisions had not achieved a "balance of certainty and flexibility for either workers or businesses," according to the NYSDOL. "It was clear the Department's initial intent to support workers while being fair to businesses was viewed as a one-size-fits-all approach that was not appropriate for every industry," the agency said.
As a result, the NYSDOL decided simply to let its proposed regulations expire without finalizing them. However, the NYSDOL has not completely abandoned its intent to regulate employee scheduling, saying it will re-evaluate the issue in the future.