The effects of the Emeryville, CA Fair Workweek Ordinance on the daily lives of low-wage workers and their families

• In Event: 1-161 - Public policy as macro-level context: The effects of local labor policies on family and child well-being

Integrative Statement

Low-income children in the United States are growing up in a context in which their parents’ work schedules are often highly irregular and unpredictable. One way of reducing that type of work schedule instability is through by changes laws regarding work schedules for low-wage workers. One such law is the Emeryville, CA, Fair Workweek Ordinance (FWO), which requires retail and food-service businesses to give their employees two weeks advanced notices of their schedule and to compensate employees if schedules are altered within the two weeks. The FWO was passed in early 2017 and went into effect on July 1, 2017.

This paper will investigate 1) the impact of the FWO on workers’ schedule instability and 2) the effects of schedule instability on the well-being of low-wage workers and their children. We hypothesize that the FWO will decrease schedule instability and that such decreased instability will improving workers’ well-being, their families’ functioning and their children’s well-being.

We test these hypotheses using a daily diary methodology, gathering survey reports from respondents every day over one-month periods, for three waves. We use a new survey tool that we designed that utilizes basic SMS text messages to gather daily reports about low-wage workers’ schedules, including unanticipated changes in hours and shifts. Our data collection method allows us to obtain detailed daily information on workers’ schedules without recall bias.

We gathered data from 96 low-wage workers with a child under age 8 in three waves: prior to FWO implementation (spring 2017); during “soft launch” enforcement (fall 2017); and during full enforcement of the law (spring 2018) (N = 6,248 person-days). The sample is balanced across: 1) retail and food firms that are subject to regulation from the FWO and 2) otherwise similar control firms that are exempt from the FWO.

At each wave, we measure daily schedule instability and daily family and child well-being outcomes every day for 30 days. We ask respondents whether they worked that day, and if so: when they started and stopped working and whether their hours were their originally scheduled hours. If not, they provide their originally scheduled hours. Thus, for each day that a respondent works at a given job, we calculate how their hours worked deviated from their originally scheduled hours, our key measure of schedule instability. Further, if respondents did not work at a given job on a given day, they are asked if they were originally scheduled to work.

We examine four outcomes on a daily basis: mood, sleep quality, parent-child interactions, and child behavior.
In preliminary results, we find that the FWO decreased schedule instability and improved parents’ sleep quality (Figure 1 shows effects on schedule instability). Further, the FWO altered the relation between schedule instability and negative parenting and child behavior, making the consequences of schedule instability less severe.

Authors

• Elizabeth O Ananat, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anna Gassman-Pines, Duke University
  Presenting Author