‘Fair workweek’ laws help more than 1.8 million workers : Laws promote workplace flexibility and protect against unfair scheduling practices

There is growing recognition that unpredictable, unstable, and often insufficient work hours are a key problem facing many U.S. workers, particularly those in low-wage industries. Volatile hours not only mean volatile incomes, but add to the strain working families face as they try to plan ahead for child care or juggle schedules in order to take classes, hold down a second job, or pursue other career opportunities.

In response to these concerns, several state and local governments have recently (between 2014 and 2017) enacted “fair workweek” laws. Five cities and one state have passed comprehensive fair workweek laws, which address a wide range of concerns faced by workers. These laws provide workers with greater stability, predictability, and flexibility in their work schedules; in many cases, they also require employers to give part-time staff opportunities to increase their hours before adding new staff. These comprehensive laws primarily apply to retail and fast-food workers—who are more likely than other workers to be subject to volatile work hours. The nearly 740,000 workers protected by these comprehensive fair workweek laws include an estimated 327,000 workers in New York City; 175,000 in San José; 172,000 in the state of Oregon; 40,000 in Seattle; 23,000 in San Francisco; and 2,500 in Emeryville, California.

In addition to these comprehensive fair workweek laws, New Hampshire, Vermont, and San Francisco have passed “right-to-request” statutes—which grant all or most private-sector workers the right to request scheduling accommodations. While these fair workweek laws are more limited in scope, they apply to a broader segment of the workforce: Over a million workers now enjoy increased workplace flexibility because of right-to-request laws.

This report describes the fair workweek laws that have been passed in these eight jurisdictions, and presents data on how many workers are protected by these laws.

Introduction

Employers in some industries have increasingly adopted scheduling practices that leave workers in desperate need of additional work yet hampered in their ability to actually seek supplemental work elsewhere or find a new job altogether. Aided by new technology that allows businesses to track sales and customer flows with precise detail, some employers now use algorithms to automatically set workers’ schedules based on predicted customer traffic, often on an hourly basis. Schedules are provided—and frequently changed—with little to no advance notice, sometimes requiring employees to remain “on call” to come to work at the drop of a hat. Many workers are required or pressured to maintain “open availability” for all hours the store is open, giving them little input into the days and times they will work. Workers’ schedules are often inconsistent from week to week, and some businesses require staff to call in at the beginning of each week—or even at the beginning of each day—to obtain their schedules. Many people are assigned fewer work hours than they would like, involuntarily working part time when they would prefer to work full time. Others are required to work long hours (with or without overtime pay), sometimes on short notice. These practices effectively shift more of the risk and costs of doing business from firms onto their employees.1

Irregular and unpredictable schedules result in a host of serious problems for working people and their families. They create volatile incomes, adding an additional barrier for families trying to manage their budgets and plan for the future. They also make it difficult for workers to explore other job opportunities. As explained in Golden 2015, irregular and unpredictable schedules can lead to increased work−family conflict for affected workers. And Morsy and Rothstein (2015) found that children whose parents work nonstandard work schedules are more likely to have lower cognitive and behavioral outcomes.

In response to harmful scheduling practices, five cities and three states have recently enacted “fair workweek” laws to protect employees. These laws ensure that workers’ time is respected and appropriately valued. A growing body of research has also found that increasing predictability, stability, and flexibility of worker schedules can lead to higher productivity and increased sales for retail stores (Williams et al. 2018; Ton 2012), so such laws can also benefit employers and the greater economy.

The state of Oregon has passed a comprehensive statewide fair workweek law, and the cities of Seattle, New York City, San Francisco, San José, and Emeryville, California, have all enacted comprehensive protections at the local level. Each policy is slightly different in its specifics, but the policies generally include provisions such as advance notice of work schedules, additional compensation for unexpected schedule changes or “on-call” hours, the right to accept or decline added or lengthened shifts, mandatory “rest periods” between shifts, and the right to request scheduling accommodations. These comprehensive fair workweek laws apply primarily to people working in chain retail stores and in fast-food restaurants but, in some cases, extend beyond those industries.

In addition, Vermont, New Hampshire, and San Francisco have enacted “right-to-request” laws—more specific fair workweek laws that focus on the right to request scheduling accommodations; these laws give all or most private-sector workers in these jurisdictions the right to a protected voice in their work hours.

The details of these laws—the specific protections provided and which workers are covered—are described in the sections below.

Impact of recently passed comprehensive fair workweek laws

While it is too early to measure the full impact of these protections, we can estimate the number of people who now enjoy greater legal protection against erratic scheduling practices because of comprehensive fair workweek laws. As shown in Table 1, these fair workweek laws now cover nearly 740,000 workers in the five cities and one state where they have been enacted thus far. (This is likely a conservative estimate, as explained in the methodological discussions below.) The largest impact is in New York City, where approximately 265,000 retail workers and 62,000 fast-food workers have gained additional protections under the law. In San José, roughly 175,000 private-sector workers are covered under the law. Coverage levels for the other localities are listed in Table 1.

Number of people impacted by recently passed state and local comprehensive fair workweek laws