Most Americans are paid by the hour, yet today’s workweek is changing—the 40-hour workweek and the 8-hour day are no longer the norm for a significant portion of the workforce. Labor standards have not kept up with rapid changes to the fastest growing industries, like retail and food service.

Our nation’s workplace protections are badly out of sync with the needs of today’s working families: while many workers face wide fluctuations in the number of hours they work each week, the shifts to which they are assigned, and, therefore, their income, current law offers no guidance or protections on these fronts. We need policies that provide everyone an opportunity to get ahead. Without an update to labor standards for hourly work, more and more workers across the economy will be subject to extreme economic uncertainty due to fluctuating hours of work. To improve the lives of working people, we need new “fair workweek” policies that ensure:

■ Predictable, healthy schedules;
■ Employee input into schedules;
■ Healthy schedules with adequate rest; and
■ Access to full-time work.

Across the country, fair workweek policies have garnered strong majority support in public polling. In Emeryville, a survey of over one hundred frontline workers in retail and food service found that:

■ A vast majority (68%) held part-time jobs;
■ 82 percent of surveyed workers in these front-line retail positions were people of color;
■ 8 out of 10 workers had hours that fluctuated week to week;
■ Nearly two out of three workers (65%) reported that they generally get their schedule a week or less in advance;
■ Over two–thirds of workers wanted to work more hours than they were assigned, and
■ Over half (53%) of workers reported that they were scheduled “clopening” shifts, or back-to-back closing and opening shifts with fewer than 11 hours between for rest and commuting.

These results demonstrate an urgent need for fair workweek standards, such as predictable schedules, employee input into schedules, and access to full-time work. In order for Emeryville’s 4,000 people employed in large retail and fast food businesses1 to truly have family-sustaining incomes and be able to invest in their communities—and for the city’s new minimum wage to have the intended effect of promoting livable jobs—the work hours of front line employees in customer facing environments like retail and food service must be sustainable.

Employers should be required to:

Commit to predictable schedules. Stable hours and reliable paychecks make it possible for working people to plan ahead to meet their responsibilities on and off the job.

■ Advance notice of schedules allows working people to have a schedule they can count on and manage even when their schedule varies from week to week.
■ Predictability pay compensates employees when they accommodate their employer’s lastminute scheduling changes, and creates an incentive for employers to plan ahead.
Ensure flexible, responsive work schedules. This helps create an invested, more productive workforce, and allows working people to set reasonable limitations on their schedules so that they can stay healthy, pursue educational opportunities, and spend time with their families.
■ Right to request specific scheduling accommodations allows employees to ask, without being unfairly penalized, for the schedules that allow them to meet their various obligations.
■ Mutual consent ensures that employees agree to any hours added to their schedule after it has been posted and protects employees from retaliation when they choose to decline hours.
Ensure healthy work schedules with adequate rest. It is crucial to personal and familial well being that employees have time to commute, eat and sleep before returning to work. The practice of “clopening” is dangerous for hourly workers and those who share the road with them.
■ Time to rest allows employees to decline work hours that provide fewer than 11 hours of rest between shifts.
■ When an employer and employee agree on a shift with less than 11 hours’ rest, employees receive time-and-a-half pay for hours worked within that window.
Restore family-sustaining jobs in growing sectors. These are the types of jobs that help our communities thrive. Millions of Americans want to work more hours to support their families, yet too
many can find only part-time jobs.
■ Access to hours for current employees creates more full-time employment by offering hours of work to current qualified, part-time employees before hiring additional staff.

Emeryville has been a leader in protecting low-wage workers. In addition to instituting a landmark minimum wage and earned sick leave law, Emeryville has acted to protect low-wage workers in its hotel industry by regulating the square footage they can be expected to clean in an eight-hour day. Now the city should enact similar work hour protections for its other low-wage sectors, retail and fast food.