成人X站

JOHN CURLEY

Council has built in ‘basic bias’ against the Seattle employer

Aug 10, 2016, 2:50 PM

Seattle employer...

Curley is opposed to adding even more government intervention in the employee-employer relationship. (AP)

(AP)

Allow me to make a sweeping generalization: The elected officials who work in area government and on the Seattle City Council has never written their names on the right-hand column of a paycheck. These people making the rules have probably never had to hire, fire or meet payroll at the end of the month. They’re not a Seattle employer.

I say this because most of the rules and regulation they adopt are in favor of the employee as opposed to the employer. That鈥檚 specifically true with the Seattle council鈥檚 proposal for a to protect workers from erratic schedules.

Related: Seattle landlord wonders why he can鈥檛 choose the 鈥榥ice and clean鈥 renters

The concept comes from a bunch of employees who have complained about the lack of turnaround time between shifts and the want for existing employees to be offered additional hours before new workers are hired.

Costing the Seattle employer

An example: They had me scheduled on a Monday to work until 11 p.m. and then have me scheduled on a Tuesday starting at 6 a.m. Thus, I鈥檓 not getting enough time to recover. So, reasonably, they want something like a 10-hour break.

If a Seattle employer can鈥檛 give them that, they鈥檝e got to pay the employee something extra. Another proposal is to mandate that schedules are made two weeks in advance. If for some reason an employee is put on the schedule but ends up not being needed, the employer owes half of the hourly wage for each hour cut.

In other words, they want to make life more comfortable for the people who work.

But where is that money coming from? You have to produce. You have to flip 100 hamburgers in an hour. At the end of that time, you鈥檝e sold those burgers, money comes into the till and you get a piece of that. Problem is, the city council is going to charge the employer extra because of a scheduling issue. I would love to find out I was kicked off the schedule and get paid.

What we will ultimately find is an unwanted third party hovering around this relationship: Employee, employer and government. The government is going to come in and look at the people who are working and will say, “Yeah, it is too difficult to get fewer hours of sleep so we鈥檙e going to try and make things fairer and better for you.”

Here鈥檚 the thing: Whenever you make work more difficult for employers 鈥 鈥 you will find a higher unemployment rate because it is harder fire, hire and run a business. If you were to have the city council take a look at the profit-loss statement of many of these businesses, they鈥檇 likely find the Seattle employer is making 2, 3, or 4 percent at the end of the year. Seattle elected officials always seem to assume that all employers are rich and that the employees are given no mercy. But if they looked and saw how much money many of these business owners actually make at the end of the year, maybe they would be more sympathetic. Instead, they have this basic bias built in that the employee is good and the employer is bad.

成人X站 Radio’s resident historian Feliks Banel thinks my characterization is over the top.

鈥淲hy would they be anti-business?鈥 he asked me. 鈥淭he city would collapse without businesses.鈥

My answer: This city is lucky that the engine itself is so strong and dynamic that it can put up with the barnacles of the city government. It鈥檚 almost like a giant ship, with the engine so large that even with all the crud hanging on the bottom of the boat, it鈥檚 still able to crank along.

John Curley on 成人X站 Newsradio 97.3 FM
  • listen to tom and curleyTune in to 成人X站 Newsradio weekdays at 3pm for The John Curley Show.

John Curley

John Curley

...

MyNorthwest Video

Video: Comedian Eitan Levine on the NYC Mayoral Race

Comedian, actor, New Yorker, and “John’s favorite Jew”, Eitan Levine, joined the show to talk about NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and the rise of antisemitism in New York in the wake of the Israeli-Gaza conflict. Listen to The John Curley Show every weekday at 3pm on 成人X站 Newsradio 97.3 FM. Listen to 成人X站 Newsradio […]

17 hours ago

...

MyNorthwest Video

Video: Todd Myers Exposes Climate Cash Breakdown!

The Washington Policy Center’s Todd Myers joins the John Curley Show to reveal his findings on where the majority of the Climate Commitment Act revenue is being spent… Spoiler Alert: Only a small fraction is actually spent on reducing carbon emissions. Listen to The John Curley Show every weekday at 3pm on 成人X站 Newsradio 97.3 […]

18 hours ago

...

MyNorthwest Video

Video: John Curley is Shocked by New Epstein Bombshell…

John Curley gives his take on the FBI and DOJ officially closing the door on any 鈥淓pstein Client List鈥濃. Listen to The John Curley Show every weekday at 3pm on 成人X站 Newsradio 97.3 FM. Listen to 成人X站 Newsradio 97.3 FM, or visit MyNorthwest.com to learn more!

2 days ago

...

MyNorthwest Video

Video: Attorney Jackson Maynard on WA Court’s Secret Union Talks Ruling

Attorney Jackson Maynard with the Citizen Action Defense Fund joined the John Curley Show to discuss the WA Supreme Court鈥檚 decision to allow union negotiations to take place with no public transparency. Listen to The John Curley Show every weekday at 3pm on 成人X站 Newsradio 97.3 FM. Listen to 成人X站 Newsradio 97.3 FM, or visit […]

2 days ago

Texas floods...

John Curley Show

Cliff Mass: ‘There were a number of opportunities to save people’ near Texas river

Cliff Mass explains that despite improved forecasting, Texas floods led to over 100 deaths with several emergency warnings.

2 days ago

...

MyNorthwest Video

Video: Why prosecutors didn’t compel Bryan Kohberger to explain why he murdered four Idaho students

Former King County Prosecutor Scott O’Toole joined The John Curley Show on 成人X站 Newsradio 97.3 FM to talk about the psychology and difficulty of prosecuting death penalty cases, such as the Bryan Kohberger case. O’Toole expressed dismay that the prosecutors in the Kohberger case didn’t compel him to explain why he murdered four young women […]

3 days ago

Council has built in ‘basic bias’ against the Seattle employer