Restoring a Fair Workweek

Low-wage workers and their families are struggling. Over the last decade, growing industries like retail, hospitality, and health care are creating an economy full of low-wage, no-benefit, part-time jobs with unreliable work hours. Corporate use of just-in-time scheduling is fueling massive under-employment and economic insecurity for working families. 

At the same time, workers endure debilitating stress due to uncertainty about when they’ll work and how much they’ll earn each week. Unable to predict their hours or pay from day to day, hourly workers struggle to balance their job with college classes, enrol their children in quality child care, secure a second job, qualify for promotions, maintain healthy routines, or be there for their families. Women and workers of color, particularly in Black communities, are especially hard hit by the trend to structure hourly work in unstable part-time jobs.

The Fair Workweek Initiative (FWI) is a collaborative effort anchored by the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and United for Respect (UFR). FWI is bringing together leading worker-organizing, community-based organizations across the country, and allied research and policy groups to develop, drive, and win policy solutions at the local, state, and federal levels. These efforts concentrate on the priorities of low-wage women and women of color, and puts impacted communities at the forefront of the fight.

We are working to shift employer practices and advance transformative policy change that achieves: 

•  Predictable, stable, and transparent schedules

•  Access to full-time employment

•  Healthy work hours with adequate rest

•  A voice in our work schedules

•  Use of workforce management and scheduling technologies that respond to workers’ needs

•  A 21st-century social safety net for today’s workforce

With this new baseline, we can provide working families with stable employment, a livable income, and adequate work house that will ensure working families can thrive.