Sec. 1. Short title; findings
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This Act may be cited as the . Schedules That Work Act Congress finds the following: The vast majority of the United States workforce today is juggling responsibilities at home and at work. Women are primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in 63 percent of families in the United States. Despite the dual responsibilities of today’s workforce, both hourly and salaried workers often have little ability to make changes to their work schedules when those changes are needed to accommodate family responsibilities.
Low-wage working mothers are more likely to be raising children on their own than higher-wage working mothers. For example, more than half of mothers in low-wage jobs who have very young children are single parents, compared to less than one-third of all working mothers who have very young children. At the same time, low-wage workers have the least control over their work schedules and the most unpredictable schedules. For example— roughly half of low-wage workers reported very little or no control over the timing of the hours they were scheduled to work; many workers in low-wage jobs receive their work schedules with very little advance notice; and 41 percent of workers who are ages 26 through 32 (referred to in this section as early career workers ) in hourly jobs report getting their work schedules a week or less in advance; some workers in low-wage jobs are sent home from work when work is slow without being paid for their scheduled shift; many employers have adopted just-in-time scheduling, which bases workers’ schedules on perceived consumer demand and often results in workers being given very little advance notice of their work schedules; and in some industries, the use of call-in shift requirements—requirements that workers call in to work to find out whether they will be scheduled to work later that day—have become common practice; and 20 to 30 percent of workers in low-wage jobs struggle with being required to work extra hours with little or no notice; and in a typical month, for the 74 percent of early-career workers in hourly jobs who report fluctuations in their work hours, those hours typically fluctuate by more than an 8-hour day of work and pay per week.
Unfair work scheduling practices make it difficult for low-wage workers to— provide necessary care for children and other family members, including securing and maintaining stable child care; access and receive needed care for the workers' own serious health conditions; pursue workforce training; get or keep a second job, which many part-time workers need to make ends meet; plan for and access transportation to reach worksites; and qualify for and maintain eligibility for needed public benefits and work supports, such as child care subsidies and benefits under the supplemental nutrition assistance program, due to fluctuations in income and work hours.
Twenty-six percent of workers on irregular or on-call schedules and 19 percent of workers on rotating or split shift schedules experience work-family conflict, as compared to 11 percent of workers on regular work schedules. Unpredictable and unstable schedules are common in a wide range of occupations, including food preparation and service, retail sales, and cleaning occupations. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for early-career adults, 64 percent of food service workers, 50 percent of retail workers, and 40 percent of cleaning workers know their schedules only a week or less in advance.
The average variation between the least and most hours worked in a single month is 70 percent for food service workers, 50 percent for retail workers, and 40 percent for cleaning workers. Food service workers, retail workers, and cleaning workers are among the lowest-paid workers. The median pay for workers in those 3 occupations is between $9.20 and $10.57 per hour, and women make up more than half of the workers in those occupations. Workers in those occupations account for nearly 18 percent of workers in the economy, which is more than 24,000,000 workers.
Employers that have implemented fair work scheduling policies that allow workers to have more control over their work schedules, and provide more predictable and stable schedules, have experienced significant benefits, including reductions in absenteeism and workforce turnover, and increased worker morale and engagement. This Act is a first step in responding to the needs of workers for a voice in the timing of their work hours and for more predictable schedules.