Employment: alternative workweek schedules.

Existing law authorizes an employer to propose an alternative workweek schedule, that authorizes work for the affected employees for no longer than 10 hours a day within a 40-hour workweek without the requirement to pay overtime wages, that may be either a single, standard work schedule or part of a menu of work schedule options offered to the employees. Under existing law, approval by secret ballot election of at least 23 of the affected employees in a readily identifiable work unit is required for adoption of an alternative workweek schedule. Existing law requires the employer to pay overtime compensation to employees who work more than their regularly scheduled hours under the alternative workweek and to make reasonable accommodations to find a work schedule that does not exceed 8 hours per day for employees who were eligible to vote in the election but are unable to work the alternative workweek hours. This bill would provide that an alternative workweek schedule adopted pursuant to those provisions may include a regularly scheduled alternative workweek that authorizes work by the affected employees for more than 10 hours a day, as long as the employees are paid at the appropriate overtime rate set forth in those provisions. The bill would provide a definition of "regularly scheduled." The bill further would exempt from those provisions employers with 5 or fewer employees, but would permit such employers and their employees to voluntarily enter into a revocable written agreement setting forth an alternative workweek schedule that allows an employee to work up to 10 hours a day, 40 hours a week, without the payment of overtime wages, with the requirement to pay a prescribed rate of overtime pay for excess hours and days.