How labor rules work in Erlangly

A planner in Dallas moves a shift in Toronto to start at five in the morning. Erlangly won't make the change: it leaves six hours' rest since last night's shift, and Ontario's law asks for eight. Here's how labor rules work in Erlangly.

The rules come in signed rule packs: for the United States, federal law and thirty-two states; Canada, federal law and all ten provinces; India, its Labour Codes, seven states and Delhi; the Philippines; Jamaica and four other Caribbean countries; and Panama, Kenya and South Africa. Each pack has a version and a signing date, and Erlangly checks its signature before it installs one. Under Settings, Labor rules, each rule says what it asks, and most name the law it comes from. Ontario's overtime, for one, starts only after forty-four hours a week, while the federal code and the western provinces count it after eight hours a day too. Each rule either warns, or blocks publishing. The year's holidays are listed underneath.

One Erlangly can plan people wherever they work. This company is based in Dallas, under Texas law, with sites in Toronto, Kingston and Manila. One install, one schedule, and each person is checked against the law where they work. A person follows their own rules if they have any, like this agent in Manila on a compressed workweek; otherwise their site's, like Kingston's; otherwise the organization's, as in Dallas. Some rules, like that compressed workweek, are only ever opted into, and they replace the country's rules. Only an admin sets the organization's.

Erlangly checks wherever a schedule changes. When it generates a draft, rest between shifts, days in a row and any hours limit that blocks are hard limits, counting the week before the period too. Then it checks the whole draft. Change a shift, a break or an activity, and only what that change makes new counts. Evening out breaks, using a draft on a published schedule, publishing, and approving a swap, for both people, are checked too. A supervisor booking coaching or a meeting is offered times by coverage, and a time that would break any rule, even a warning, is refused. All of it runs inside Erlangly, on your own server.

Every rule either warns or blocks. A violation stops the change, or the publish, until it's fixed. A warning goes ahead once someone confirms it: their name, the warnings and any reason they give go into the audit trail. A planner's hand edit to a published schedule always takes a reason. Here, Ontario's rest rule blocks, while going past forty hours a week in Dallas only warns.

Your agreements may ask for more than the law. A planner can tighten any rule. Loosening one, or turning it off, takes an admin and a reason, and the list shows it: what applies here instead of the pack's, who changed it, and why. You can add holidays too. Add one the pack doesn't have, like a city's holiday or a company day off, and it's marked Added here. Add the ones announced at short notice too, like the Eids, until an update brings them. Forecasts leave your organization's holidays out of their history.

Laws change. Every pack is checked against its official sources each quarter, and a change ships in the next release. When you upgrade, Erlangly installs the newer pack by itself, and the date beside the rules moves on. Your changes and the holidays you added stay, and if the law becomes stricter than a change, the stricter rule applies and your admins are told. If the law drops a rule, it goes, along with your change to it. Holidays roll forward for this year and the next two. And as long as your license includes updates, you get every new pack; once they end, you keep the ones you have.

The rules help you follow the law, but they aren't legal advice, and they may be incomplete or out of date. You're responsible for your schedules following the law where your people work. So check the rules against it, change them where you need to, and where the guide says a rule isn't checked, check it yourself.

Erlangly. Install it free, at erlangly.com.