Imagine that your receptionist will be out for several months or an employee just quit. Now imagine that before you place a call to a staffing company to find a temporary receptionist or begin interviewing candidates to replace the employee who just quit, you would have to first offer every qualified part-time employee the opportunity to work additional hours. As unworkable as this may sound, this is what the California Legislature proposed in the Opportunity to Work Act (Assembly Bill 5, OWA).

Employers in San Francisco and San Jose may not think this is a big deal, because both cities already have ordinances imposing similar requirements (San Francisco effective on July 3, 2015 and San Jose on March 13, 2017). The author of the OWA even modeled the bill after the San Jose ordinance, but took it much further in the OWA. While these city ordinances have a limited geographic scope, apply only to large employers, or target specific industries, the OWA has no such restrictions. Instead, the OWA would apply to any employer in California, regardless of industry, with 10 or more employees. While it appears the OWA will not survive the legislative process this year, it may return in future years. We need to look no further than the recent efforts to enact predictable scheduling legislation, which would require employers to provide advance notice of work schedules, to see that we likely have not seen the end of the OWA. In 2015 and 2016—after several cities enacted similar ordinances—the California Legislature made several efforts to enact predictable scheduling legislation, and while efforts so far have been unsuccessful, it is important for businesses to understand how such legislation can impact them given that their ultimate passage could simply be a matter of time.

Increased administrative burden and cost. In addition to identifying which employees are qualified to perform certain jobs, the OWA would impose on employers the burden of coordinating complex schedules. There are many employers whose full-time non-exempt employees are scheduled to work fewer than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week. For example, an employer whose full-time non-exempt employees work seven hours a day and 35 hours a week would have to offer up to one hour a day to up to 40 different employees. With all of the demands placed on human resource professionals, it may be necessary for companies to expand their HR departments (after offering those hours to qualified employees first of course).