Member News

Westword: Restaurateurs Feel Forked by Fair Workweek Proposal

On January 24, HB23-1118: Fair Workweek Employment Standards landed like a stink bomb on the local restaurant industry when it was introduced in the Colorado Legislature. This early in the process, the current language is subject to change, but the meat of the proposal would require retail and food and beverage establishments with more than 250 workers to post shifts fourteen days in advance.

Any changes after the fourteen-day threshold would require written documentation for the worker and predictability pay from the employer. As the bill stands, the predictability rate would be an extra hour of pay for every hour added, and two additional hours of pay for every hour subtracted.

One organization that was not consulted during the stakeholder process: the Colorado Restaurant Association. “The first time we had seen the bill was on January 3,” says Sonia Riggs, CEO of the CRA. “So we basically had 24 hours to digest and review” before meeting with legislators the next day. Not only was the CRA frustrated at being left out of the stakeholder review process, but the group is still concerned about the vagueness of the language regarding who counts as a worker against the 250-worker threshold, which could lead to the proposal impacting restaurants that many Coloradans consider small, independent eateries.

Read the full article here.