Unpredictable work schedules are prevalent in US service industries. Under pressure to minimize labor costs, managers rely on adjustable working hours to better respond to shifts in consumer demand. Just-in-time scheduling, including fluctuating hours, last-minute call-ins, and on-call shifts, make it difficult for workers to pursue opportunities such as second jobs or additional education, trapping them in low-wage careers. Additionally, many workers face underemployment due to insufficient hours, leaving them unable to meet critical financial needs. The service sector’s dependence on flexible work arrangements—involving varying degrees of worker control over their schedules—underlies these difficulties.
Implementing responsible scheduling practices has been shown to enhance worker well-being without sacrificing company performance. By improving job satisfaction and reducing workers’ material hardship, greater schedule certainty can lead to more engaged and productive workers. While a number of localities have pursued ways to help workers and employers with flexible scheduling, Oregon’s Fair Work Week Act is the first state-level initiative to regulate scheduling in the service sector, affecting more than 170,000 workers across the food, retail, and hospitality industries. Effective July 2018, the law aims to extend rights, including advance notice of schedules, minimum rest periods, and workers’ ability to provide input on their schedules. The law also introduces “predictability pay” to compensate workers for accepting last-minute schedule changes, with the aim of discouraging employers from relying on flexible scheduling practices.
Using insights from in-depth interviews with 71 workers and 27 managers across Oregon, researchers Larissa Petrucci, Lola Loustaunau, Ellen Scott, and Lina Stepick evaluated the effectiveness of the Fair Work Week Act for worker outcomes a year after its implementation. The results are supplemented with 12 interviews of state enforcement agencies, union representatives, and policy advocates.
Key findings
- Strikingly low awareness of the law among employees and managers exposed significant flaws in its implementation and enforcement. Among interviewed participants, 55 percent of frontline workers and 33 percent of managers were completely unaware of the legislation. An overwhelming majority of interviewees were unaware of specific provisions of the law, such as their rights to provide input on their schedule (75 percent of workers) and to predictability pay (84 percent of workers and managers). Many workers who were aware of the law reported either mistakenly believing it was an initiative independently implemented by their employers or receiving instructions from their employers on how to circumvent it.
- Workers frequently waived their rights to predictability pay to receive much-needed work hours for financial security. The law permits employers to bypass predictability pay—additional pay for last-minute schedule changes—by having workers yield their rights through waivers or voluntary standby lists. More than 50 percent of all interviewees reported that volunteer standby lists were used at their workplace to fill schedule gaps, and 75 percent of workers reported feeling pressured to sign on as the only mechanism to secure additional hours. Informal pressures to volunteer for last-minute shifts were equally prevalent and sometimes led workers to forgo legal protections.
- Employers did not change their practices in response to optional aspects of the law, such as seeking worker input on schedules. While the law provided for workers’ right to request schedules, no managers interviewed changed how they sought or received worker input on schedules. Importantly, though, this is not an infringement, as the law explicitly states that employers are not obligated to honor their employees’ scheduling requests. Not surprisingly, 75 percent of interviewed workers were unaware of their right to provide input on their schedule in the first place.
- The advance notice scheduling provision may have inadvertently resulted in tighter restrictions on worker-requested schedule changes. Some managers interviewed extended the notice period for time off requests and restricted workers’ ability to swap shifts. Shift change requests were also increasingly denied, further reducing workers' control over their schedules and undermining schedule predictability.
- Scheduling technology facilitated the widespread adoption of a minimum 10-hour rest period between shifts, as required by the law. Nearly all workers interviewed (90 percent) were aware of this rest period, which protects workers from so-called “clopening” shifts, where they close and open back-to-back. This successful implementation was facilitated by automatic prompts in scheduling software, in addition to unambiguous and strict language in the law.
Policy and practice implications
The authors of the research study identified the following implications for policymakers:
- Increase state funding to support the education, implementation, and enforcement of fair scheduling legislation. Interviewed staff at the Bureau of Labor and Industries cited inadequate funding as their primary barrier to providing comprehensive programming to support the law's implementation. Increasing funding would enable hiring more staff, developing extensive training materials, expanding outreach efforts, and implementing proactive enforcement measures, thereby enhancing the overall effectiveness of fair scheduling legislation.
- Minimize or exclude exceptions in fair scheduling legislation that allow workers to waive their rights to predictability pay. Compensation for last-minute schedule changes should be mandatory in all cases. Without such a requirement, financial demands and workplace dynamics can exert coercive pressures on workers to accept last-minute schedule changes without compensation. Fair scheduling legislation in Seattle banned waivers and made notable strides in ensuring employees are compensated for last-minute schedule changes.
- Ensure that fair scheduling legislation incorporates precise and rigorous language to preclude differences in interpretation. Avoiding ambiguous terms like “voluntary” is critical to prevent employers from circumventing predictability pay obligations by portraying schedule changes as workers’ choices. To provide clarity and avoid legal loopholes, Emeryville and Seattle specify terms such as “employer-initiated” and “employee-requested,” in contrast to Oregon’s more ambiguous term “voluntary.”
WorkRise has identified the following additional implications for policy and practice:
- Policymakers and employers could collaborate to develop solutions that enable service-sector businesses to manage fluctuating customer demand without excessively relying on last-minute scheduling practices, especially in areas where fair work week legislation does not exist or is even legally precluded.
- Policymakers could partner with worker centers and union representatives.
- Labor enforcement agencies and advocacy groups couldexpand awareness campaigns that inform employers and workers about their obligations and rights under fair scheduling legislation.
- Technology companies could integratefair scheduling features into their scheduling platforms, which would assist managers with legislative compliance.
- Employers in the service industry should address underemployment to prevent workers from foregoing their predictability pay due to financial need. This can be achieved by guaranteeing minimum hours or requiring managers to offer extra hours to current employees before hiring new ones.
Low-wage service workers face severe and often unseen challenges related to insufficient work hours and schedule unpredictability. Evidence illustrates the value of fair scheduling practices for both workers and employers and shows the important role that policy can plan in ensuring those practices are implemented. This study of Oregon’s Fair Work Week Act underscores the need for comprehensive education, precise legislative language, and strong enforcement mechanisms to ensure these laws adequately support the low-wage workforce.