Fair Workweek Rules

General orientation, not legal advice. Coverage and thresholds change; check the current rules for each location you operate in.

There is no US federal predictive scheduling law. What exists is a set of city ordinances and one statewide rule, with a recognisable common structure.

The common shape

A written schedule a defined period in advance, most commonly fourteen days.

Predictability pay when the employer changes it inside that window — frequently an hour at the regular rate, with variations.

A right to rest between a closing and an opening shift, typically nine to eleven hours, with a premium owed if it is worked anyway.

A good-faith estimate of hours provided at hire.

Access to hours: additional hours offered to existing part-time staff before new people are hired.

Records retained, commonly three years.

Where it applies

Oregon is the only state with a statewide law.

Roughly ten to eleven cities have ordinances, including San Francisco, Emeryville, New York City, Seattle, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles City, Berkeley, Evanston and Los Angeles County.

Covered industries are usually retail, food service and hospitality; Chicago also reaches healthcare and manufacturing.

Thresholds are by employer size, frequently counted globally rather than locally, which catches operations that assume a small local headcount exempts them.

The important exceptions

New York City's retail rules work differently: seventy-two hours' notice with a prohibition on changes, rather than fourteen days with a premium. The mechanic is structurally different and a compliance approach built for one will not satisfy the other.

NYC fast food uses fixed-dollar premiums rather than hourly ones.

Seattle's premium is unusually generous — half the scheduled hours for changes within the window.

And several states, including Texas, Florida and Georgia, prohibit their cities from enacting such rules at all, so the absence of a local ordinance may be preemption rather than an oversight.

Enforcement

It has scaled. Settlements in New York City have reached tens of millions of dollars for a single chain, with investigations covering multi-year lookback windows.

Penalties are typically per employee per violation, which multiplies quickly across a workforce.

Which means this is no longer a footnote in a scheduling project. It is a design constraint.

What to do about it

Determine coverage per location, not per company.

Build the common shape everywhere — fourteen days, no employer changes inside it, rest between shifts, hours offered internally first.

Because meeting the strictest applicable rule everywhere is simpler than tracking eleven variants, and most of it is good practice regardless.

Keep the records, because the gap in enforcement cases is usually documentation rather than intent.

Determine coverage per location

Not per company.

Thresholds are frequently counted globally — total employees everywhere — while coverage is local.

Which catches operations that assume a small local headcount exempts them.

And the absence of a local ordinance may be state preemption rather than an oversight, so check which it is before concluding you are outside the rules.

Check the difficult case

Use employee time tracking to frame one representative case. The useful evidence is what happens when an employee questions an entry and a manager must correct and export it.

Independent reference

For a thematic point of reference, see the U.S. Department of Labor. Its current material provides useful context beyond product documentation.