Compliance guideRead at source, 9 September 2026

Fair Workweek Laws: Who Is Covered, and What a Schedule Change Costs

Fair workweek — also called predictive or secure scheduling — is a set of state and city laws that turn a schedule change into a priced transaction. There is no federal law. Five jurisdictions read at source for this page all share the same architecture: a written good faith estimate of hours at hire, a posted schedule 14 days in advance (10 hours' rest between shifts in most of them), predictability pay when the employer changes it, a right to decline a shift that breaks the rest gap, and an obligation to offer extra hours to existing staff before hiring. What differs is the price. A single late change is $10 in New York City fast food and one hour's pay in Chicago; a clopening is $100 in New York City, $40 in Philadelphia, time-and-a-half in Seattle and Oregon, and 1.25× the whole shift in Chicago.

The six duties, in the order they bite

• A good faith estimate at hire. A written statement of the hours the person can expect — median monthly hours in Oregon, average weekly hours and typical days and times in Philadelphia, an estimate covering the first ninety days in Chicago.
• The posted schedule. Fourteen days ahead in Oregon, New York City, Seattle, Chicago and Philadelphia, posted where staff can see it.
• Predictability pay. Money owed when the employer changes a posted shift, scaled by how late the change comes and whether it adds or removes hours.
• The right to rest. A minimum gap between a closing shift and the next opening one — 10 hours in Oregon, Seattle and Chicago, 11 in New York City fast food, 9 in Philadelphia — which the employee can decline, and which costs a premium if worked.
• Access to hours. Extra hours must be offered to existing employees before new people are hired: three days' posted notice in Seattle, 72 hours in Philadelphia.
• Records. Every one of these is provable only on paper, which is where most enforcement actually lands.

Who is covered where

Oregon: the statewide one

Oregon's predictive scheduling law covers retail, hospitality and food service establishments — including chains and integrated enterprises — employing 500 or more people worldwide. New hires get a written good faith estimate stating the median number of hours they can expect in an average month, plus an explanation of the voluntary standby list and any on-call shift policy. The written schedule must be given at least 14 calendar days before the first day it covers.

Change it after that and the compensation is specific: one hour of pay at the regular rate when hours are added or an extra shift is scheduled, and one half times the regular rate for each scheduled hour the employee no longer works when hours are cut or a shift is cancelled. Work scheduled during the first 10 hours after the end of the previous day's shift or on-call shift requires the employee's consent and is paid at one and a half times the regular rate. The voluntary standby list is the escape valve, and its conditions are strict: employees must have requested or agreed to it in writing, and the written policy must say that it is voluntary, how they will be contacted, that they may decline, and that accepting standby hours does not trigger the change compensation.

New York City: the priced change table

New York City's fast food rules are the most explicitly transactional of the five, and the schedule change premium is a published table rather than a formula. The employer must give the schedule at least 14 days — expressed in the guidance as 336 hours — before the first day it covers, and then pays per change:

A clopening — a shift beginning less than 11 hours after the previous one ended — carries a $100 premium per occurrence and requires the employee's written consent. Beyond scheduling, the New York City rules also restrict discharge and hour reductions: an employer may not fire a fast food worker or cut their hours by more than 15% without a legitimate business reason, and must reinstate laid-off employees by seniority when work becomes available. Retail is covered by a separate set of rules in the same law.

Seattle and Philadelphia: the same shape, different prices

Seattle's Secure Scheduling Ordinance, in force since 1 July 2017, covers hourly employees at retail and food services establishments with 500 or more employees worldwide, with full-service restaurants also needing 40 or more locations. Fourteen days' posted notice; a good faith estimate at hire with annual updates; time-and-a-half for hours worked between a closing and an opening separated by less than 10 hours; one hour's pay for added hours or a shifted start; half the lost wages when someone is sent home early or an on-call shift is not called in; and a three-day posting of available hours to existing staff before hiring outside.

Philadelphia's Chapter 9-4600 covers retail, hospitality and food service employers with 250 or more employees and 30 or more locations worldwide. The posted schedule runs 14 days ahead. Predictability pay is one hour at the regular rate when time is added, and no less than half the regular rate per hour for scheduled hours not worked when hours are cut or a shift is cancelled. The rest gap is the shortest of the five at 9 hours, and working inside it costs $40 per shift. Available shifts must be posted to existing employees for at least 72 hours before anyone new is hired.

Chicago: the widest industry list

Chicago is the outlier worth studying, because it reaches well beyond retail and food. Covered industries are building services, healthcare, hotels, manufacturing, restaurants, retail and warehouse services. The employer test is 100 or more employees globally — 250 for not-for-profits — plus at least 50 covered employees; franchise restaurants need 30 locations and 250 employees globally and at least four Chicago locations.

Coverage is also capped by earnings. A covered employee must earn no more than $62,561.90 a year salaried or $32.60 an hour, on the thresholds published for 2025. Those figures are indexed and republished, so check the current ones each year before deciding who is in scope.

The mechanics: 14 days' advance notice; the right to decline hours added within that window; one hour's predictability pay when hours are added, or a shift's time or date changes with no change in length, or hours are subtracted with more than 24 hours' notice; no less than 50% of pay for hours cancelled with less than 24 hours' notice, and 50% of the whole shift if the entire shift goes; and a right to rest that lets an employee decline any shift starting less than 10 hours after the previous day's ended — paid, if worked, at 1.25 times base rate for the entire affected shift, whether or not they agreed. The initial good faith estimate covers the first ninety days and must include average weekly hours, expected days, and start and end times.

Price a schedule change

Pick a jurisdiction and describe the change. This applies the published rules from the sources above; it is a reading aid, not legal advice, and it does not cover every exception, collective agreement or local ordinance.

Other jurisdictions, not read at source here

Predictive scheduling ordinances also exist in San Francisco, Berkeley, Emeryville, the City of Los Angeles, unincorporated Los Angeles County and Evanston, Illinois. We have not read those at their primary sources for this page, so we are not going to print their thresholds and premiums as though we had. If you operate in one, get the current ordinance text from that city or county before writing your policy — the parameters that vary most are the industry list, the employee-count threshold and the rest-gap premium, and each of those changes what your managers may do on a Tuesday afternoon.

Where employers actually get caught

• The schedule exists but was never posted. A rota in a manager's phone is not a posted schedule, and the notice clock runs from posting.
• Consent is verbal. Rest-gap waivers, standby lists and clopening agreements are written requirements in every jurisdiction here. A remembered yes is not one.
• The premium is treated as a fine to avoid. It is not a penalty, it is a price. Paying it correctly is compliance; hiding the change is the violation.
• Hours are given to a new hire. Access-to-hours rules mean an open shift belongs to your existing part-timers first, with a posting period, before anyone new starts.
• The good faith estimate is a template with no hours in it. "Hours vary" is not an estimate of hours.
• The threshold moved. Chicago's earnings caps are republished; employer-size counts are worldwide, not local, so an acquisition can bring you into scope without anything changing on the ground.

The part that helps you hire

Almost every discussion of these laws treats them as cost. In a frontline labour market they are also the single most advertisable thing you have, because the thing candidates in these industries complain about most is not pay alone — it is not knowing what next week looks like.

If you are already complying, say so in the ad: the schedule goes out fourteen days ahead, you will not be asked to close and open, and extra hours go to the team before they go outside. Across the 891 Boostpoint-managed Meta campaigns in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, the median cost per applicant was $13.88, and the ads that carry a concrete, checkable commitment consistently outperform the ones that promise a culture. A specific promise about the schedule is exactly that kind of commitment, and it costs nothing to state something you are legally obliged to do anyway.

Related: what makes a good job ad covers how to say it, and healthcare and skilled trades cover the sectors where shift predictability moves applications most.

Frequently asked questions