Don’t kick Colorado restaurants while they are still down
This August, I’ll proudly celebrate my 40th anniversary as a busboy and hospitality professional in the restaurant industry. I’ve spent my entire adult life and most of my adolescence in this industry, starting as a busser and moving to ownership; even this week, I was bussing tables at Frasca Food and Wine, our flagship restaurant in the heart of Boulder, and later I’ll be polishing glasses at Sunday Vinyl in Denver.
Nothing in my four decades in this industry scares me as much as House Bill 1118 ( Fair Workweek Employment Standards), which would have a devastating effect on my staff, my businesses, and the entire Colorado restaurant industry.
I love the restaurant industry for so many reasons, even though we all know it’s a tough business, but mostly because of what it offers for so many people across all walks of life. For starters, restaurants and food- service businesses employ the most single mothers of any industry. When school is canceled or a child is sick, those mothers need to be able to give up their shifts without repercussions on themselves or their employers. Those same mothers might also want to pick up a shift the next week to make back missing income, and this bill would penalize employers like me for making lastminute schedule changes. This bill harms the very people it is meant to help.
We also employ so many firstgeneration immigrants who are new to this country, who may be working in a different industry during the day, like construction or landscaping, and then pick up restaurant shifts at night so they can help their families get ahead after enormous life disruptions. Restaurants offer flexibility to these hardworking people when they need it most.
Just this week, a few people on our team asked to swap shifts because they felt uncomfortable driving their cars on snowy roads from as far away as Longmont; many of our employees live miles from our restaurants, given the extremely high cost of living in Boulder and metro Denver. We need a full team during Valentine’s week, but under House Bill 1118, I wouldn’t have the flexibility to staff my dining rooms and employees wouldn’t have the flexibility to live their best lives.
The bill requires additional pay when someone works, even voluntarily, back- to- back shifts without a required rest period and when last- minute schedule changes are made.
The average age of workers in the restaurant industry is 24 years old, which means that there are countless workers even younger than that — mostly students — who need the flexibility our scheduling can provide them. What happens when school projects or exams get in the way of a schedule that was posted two weeks prior, or young people want to pick up more shifts to whittle down their student loans? Their schedules are variable, and so is our business, which serves the whims of our community.
The bill also requires predictability pay, which is a direct affront to an industry trying valiantly to address the mental health of its workforce. Predictability pay would require me to pay employees an extra unworked bonus hour or two for last- minute schedule changes with certain exceptions for when employees agree to swap shifts together.
I pay for six mental health days each year for every person on my staff, so if they are having a tough day and need to rest, I can pay them to stay home and take care of themselves. I can only do that if they have the option to ask their co- workers to pick up their shifts at the last minute without further financial penalties on my business.
The truth is, the restaurant industry has not recovered from the effects of COVID- 19 pandemic, and we certainly haven’t recovered our workforce. The administrative burden that this bill puts on managers — who are employees, too — is egregious. Stress levels are high enough, and now, this bill stands to add friction between management and other employees, with managers having to account for every schedule change in writing across hundreds of workers at the risk of fines or lawsuits, for even one mistake. The stress of this could crush our industry forever.
By the end of 2023, I will employ 250 Coloradans at my restaurants, which makes me extremely proud. I treat them as true professionals, providing insurance, matching 401Ks, and other real- job benefits. If HB1118 passes, those benefits would end and I couldn’t open any more restaurants in Colorado, either; I’d have to look to Arizona, where I could continue offering benefits to my team.
Why would we want to turn Colorado into an adversarial work environment that’s unattractive to new businesses and restaurant workers? If this bill passes, we’ll have failed to do what’s right for the 260,000plus Colorado food service workers who depend on all of us for their livelihoods. This bill would crush restaurant workers and the restaurants we all know and love. After 40 years, I pray that doesn’t happen.