My question involves employment and labor law for the state of: California
Bare with me, this will be a bit lengthy, but there will be a question at the end, I promise.
Hello. I work in lower management in a fast food restaurant. Recently, we'd had to make some serious changes to our schedule starting tomorrow (Feb. 16th, which is the start of the new pay period) due to extenuating circumstances. One of our employees is to be terminated. As such, quite a few shifts have been moved around. In particular there is an issue with one employee (employee a) working her schedule for tomorrow. She was rescheduled to work the morning shift (she was supposed to close). I, personally called her to inform her of the change (at about 9:30 am Feb 15th), and to be sure it wouldn't cause any undue conflict of personal hardship for her. She agreed to work the new shift, and told me it would not be a problem. So I followed through with the rest of the shift changes that day, which resulted in another of my employees (employee b) changing her child care arrangements to work an altered shift. Basically these two employees switched shifts. Why? I couldn't tell you. That was my manager's decision; she rewrote the schedule. I suspect it may have had something to do with moving the employee who is friends with the employee to be fired, off the shift the fired employee was to be working, in order to avoid any unnecessary tension or any sort of protest walk outs....but that would just be a guess. These notifications were given 24 hrs in advance, and agreed to.
Fast forward to late afternoon today, the first employee (employee a) in question, calls me in my off hours and informs me that she had plans that she forgot about and could not work her new shift. Annoying? Yes. Story doubtful? Obviously. But not my concern as she generally shows up for her shifts. Call offs happen and scheduling conflicts happen, especially with such short notice. Therefore, I try to flip the shifts back to their original position between the two employees. However, this is not possible, as, despite her best efforts employee b cannot alter her child care arrangements a second time (and she did try). So I had no choice but to call in another employee to cover the shift that employee a had ultimately, committed to work. Meaning that employee a was cut from the schedule for that day (Feb 16th). Please understand that I know this is a difficult situation for everyone involved, and NOT how this business is typically managed. These were extenuating circumstances.
So, my question is this. All things considered, have we broken any sort of employment laws? Would employee a have any cause for recourse? Mostly for my own curiosity. My manager generally handles all of the legal headaches.

