Delivery of Fair Workweek Protections and Work-Family Conflict

• In Event: Employment Instability, Working-Time Employment Policies, and Economic, Health, and Work-Family Wellbeing

Abstract

In low-paid service jobs, work schedules are often unstable and unpredictable. Research has shown that these scheduling conditions can undermine worker well-being, including work-family conflict (WFC). In response, a growing number of U.S. cities and the state of Oregon have adopted Fair Workweek (FWW) laws that set standards for scheduling practices, including requirements for advance notice, compensation for employer-initiated schedule changes, and related protections. However, existing evaluations of FWW laws have largely focused on policy implementation, workers’ experiences of scheduling practices targeted by the laws, and labor market outcomes. Yet coverage does not necessarily translate into the full delivery of intended protections in practice (Lambert and Haley, 2021), and relatively little research has examined whether this matters for work-family conflict.

This paper asks two related questions. First, to what extent is the actual delivery of FWW protections associated with work-family conflict? Second, can this relationship be understood through dimensions of schedule quality, including predictability, stability, and control? In this paper, we pay particular attention to schedule predictability, especially advance notice, because it is one of the most direct targets of FWW laws and is relevant to workers’ ability to manage family and personal responsibilities.

Using data from on-line surveys conducted in 2024 with 1,781 retail and food service workers in Chicago, New York City, and Seattle and in adjacent uncovered areas, this study constructs a worker-level measure of delivery intensity. This measure captures the extent to which workers receive protections when they encounter situations in which those protections should apply, relative to the total number of such situations, and thus indicates how fully legal protections are realized beyond nominal coverage. The study also considers whether this relationship may be understood through dimensions of schedule quality, with particular attention to detailed measures of advance notice as an indicator of schedule predictability. Work-family conflict is measured using survey items on the extent to which work interferes with personal and family life.

Multivariate regression models are used to examine how the delivery of FWW protections relates to work-family conflict. Preliminary analyses suggest that delivery intensity is more consistently associated with lower levels of WFC than policy coverage alone, while additional analyses are examining whether this relationship may also be understood through schedule quality characteristics including predictability, stability, and control.

This study aims to contribute to the literature by linking FWW laws to workers’ family well-being while moving beyond the assumption that workers in covered areas necessarily receive legal protections. More specifically, it examines whether the extent to which protections are actually delivered helps explain work-family conflict by shaping workers’ everyday scheduling experiences.

Author

• Yuxi He, The University of Chicago
  Presenting Author