The Effect of Fair Workweek Legislation on Work Hour Instability Among Hourly Workers

Background/Purpose: As a policy response to growing concerns around precarious work schedules in low-wage service jobs, the state of Oregon passed the Fair Work Week Act (FWWA) in 2017. The primary purpose of the FWWA is to improve predictability, stability, and access to hours. Although several municipalities have passed similar laws, Oregon is the only state to have enacted scheduling legislation. This study estimates the causal effect of the implementation of the FWWA on schedule instability by examining whether the proportion of hourly employees who report that their weekly work hours vary has declined since enactment of the law.

Methods: The monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) data derived from combining January 2016 to December 2019 is used for analysis. The sample includes respondents (N=1,616) targeted by the FWWA: 1) hourly employees in Oregon who are 2) employed in covered industries, i.e., retail trade, hospitality, and foodservice. The outcome variable is the share of these employees who responded that their weekly work hours vary, in a given industry sector (food service; hospitality; retail trade), in a given month (%). The main explanatory variable is the month and year of the survey including the date when implementation of the FWWA began (July 2018). Covariates include the monthly employment level, average wage level of given industry, and the monthly unemployment rate.

The analytic method is Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD). RDD is a quasi-experimental approach that estimates the causal effect of a treatment by modeling the random assignment mechanism. Subjects are assigned to the treatment group if an observed assignment variable exceeds a known cutoff point. In this case, the assignment variable is the time point of the survey and the cutoff point is the date of the FWWA implementation. RDD extrapolates the causal effect by estimating the discontinuity of the regression function at the cutoff point.

Results: The share of hourly employees reporting that their weekly work hours vary decreased by 4.1% after FWWA was implemented. The decline is not, however, statistically significant; standard errors are large. This result did not change in sensitivity analyses that used bandwidths around the cutoff point.

Conclusions and Implications: The findings suggest that the FWWA has yet to substantially alleviate the problem of work hour volatility among Oregon service workers. This result is consistent with evaluations of Seattle’s scheduling ordinance that show how, even two years after enactment, covered employees report limited improvements in schedule stability and frontline managers report difficulties in implementing the required provisions. Whether or not Oregon’s law will have more substantial effects in longer-term will depend on how well the policy is implemented and on the extent to which the provisions are strong enough to transform scheduling practices in low-wage jobs. Assessing how public policies are enforced, implemented and adopted in the frontline is essential for social work research in evaluating the outcome of public policies intended to support the wellbeing of marginalized workers.