As I recently tucked my brand new shiny Medicare card into my wallet, in advance of my rapidly approaching 65th birthday, I find myself relentlessly pleased I spent a career in the U.S. military. I recall my very first paycheck as a 2nd Lieutenant, collected from my temporary post office box at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where I was attending ICBM launch officer school. It was for $460, and I was just stunned I’d be getting that massive amount of money every couple of weeks. Retiring more than 25 years later, with a government guaranteed pension, I am in a much better place than I likely would have been had I accepted an earlier offer of employment.

Whew.

You see, back when I was in high school and when I was in college, I worked part-time at a couple of McDonald’s restaurants and worked my way up to a manager position. I was pretty good at the tasks involved, and during my sophomore year of college, the store manager made me an offer. He wanted me to drop out of college and go full-time. He proposed I transfer from an hourly assistant manager to a salaried position. He said he could offer me an annual salary of, get ready, $9,500. Granted this was 1977 or so, but it didn’t take too long for me to respectfully decline his offer.

His offer was so low because McDonald’s, like most companies that have lots of employees, are very concerned about labor costs. When I was a manager, we’d carefully review the number of people we had punched into the clock as the day went on. It was not at all unusual, when things got slow, for us to send an employee home early to reduce labor costs. As these were mostly kids, they didn’t object too much, but there were some who were full-time and adults who needed to work as many hours as possible to pay their rent and other expenses.

I thought of those long ago days when I read a recent Colorado Politics story about the “Fair Workweek” bill which would require companies to pay at least an hour of wages to an employee who showed up for his or her shift only to find that, due to there not being enough work, he or she was being sent home.

The story notes lots of Colorado business and industry groups rallying in opposition to the proposal. They argue the legislative measure imposes punitive and “inflexible” requirements that fail to consider companies operational needs and the “nature of unpredictable industries.”

Those representing the workers, not surprisingly, disagree. They argue employers just sending people home rather than allowing them to work their already-scheduled shifts is unfair and it puts “an untenable burden on families.”

In response to the bill, we hear the usual objections from industry: the bill will drive business out of the state and it will negatively impact Colorado’s economic competitiveness.

Right…

I’m sure the business people are correct, in that being able to tell people they have work and then telling them to go home instead certainly gives the businesses involved additional flexibility to deal with labor costs, as I did those many years ago at McDonald’s. But in my time as a manager, we never told someone who just showed up to go home. That employee has already incurred costs (gas, bus fare, etc.) to show up and it is, well, just not fair to say they can be refused work hours at no cost to the employer. If the employer hadn’t scheduled more people than needed we wouldn’t have this situation in the first place.

It seems quite reasonable to me if a company’s employee shows up and is not actually needed, that person should get some payment for their time already invested. An hour’s wages feels right to me, but I admit I’m not an expert in this area.

Recall your own youth for a moment: what was the thing that kids (to this day) say when truly outraged – “that’s not fair!” In that statement, little kids all the way up to adults demonstrate something that should be a guiding principle: fairness. It simply isn’t fair to the workers for companies to be able to manipulate them at no cost to the company.

The bill covers other areas as well, including regulations on scheduling and more. As always, the devil is in the details. That said, it seems to me basic fairness is a value that should, in fact, be part of doing business – and in this case, when you’ve asked someone to show up for work, you need to pay them something. Imagine for a moment, in your own job, if your boss came to you from time to time and sent you home without pay, or didn’t even allow you to get to work when your shift starts, because they are trying to save a few dollars. If you can put yourself in that position, perhaps you can see how especially hourly-workers are at risk.

Bill 23-118 is a good idea. I’m sure that during debate it will be tweaked, but the basic idea behind it is sound: fairness.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.