Impacts of a Fair Workweek Ordinance on Work-Family Conflict and Material Hardship

Background:

Fair Workweek (FWW) laws advance employment protections for marginalized, disproportionately BIPOC workers in diverse industries. They are intended to improve core qualities of workers’ scheduling experiences that research has shown can undermine the economic security and well-being of hourly workers and families (Lambert, Henly, and Kim 2019; Schneider and Harknett 2019). Chicago is one of many cities that has enacted FWW laws. Although these laws hold the potential to impact the lives of workers, their impact depends on their implementation and how workers experience them. We report early findings from a study examining whether a FWW ordinance in Chicago is mitigating material hardship (MH) and improving work-family conflict (WFC) for employees in jobs covered by the law. This pilot study is part of a larger project being carried out with workers and managers in multiple regions that aims to advance the empirical basis for FWW policies and to identify pragmatic strategies for achieving their intended objectives.

Method:

The survey includes a “treatment” sample of 118 workers in jobs covered by Chicago’s FWW ordinance and a “comparison” sample of 91 workers in similar jobs whose worksites are located outside of Chicago, but in Cook County. Respondents were recruited as part of a Qualtrics paid panel. Survey variables include measures of WFC and MH, several work schedule dimensions, and covariates including industry type, race, and gender. Worksite location (Chicago vs Cook County/not Chicago) is the key independent variable. We present descriptive data on dependent variables, work schedules and covariates by worksite location and regression results on the relationship between worksite and each schedule dimension and WFC and MH. We run multivariate models for the sample overall and for industry subgroups and conduct several robustness tests to increase confidence in results.

Results:

We find no overall impacts of the FWW ordinance on schedule characteristics or WFC and MH. However, within the food service industry (n=63), Chicago workers covered by the FWW ordinance reported statistically significantly lower WFC and less MH than counterparts outside of Chicago. Moreover, within the food service subgroup, manager-driven schedule changes, “clopenings”, and perceived choice to comply with manager requests mediate WFC and MH, while advance schedule notice, additional pay for canceled shifts and shift extensions do not.

Conclusions and Implications:

FWW laws are meant to improve schedule predictability and pay for unanticipated schedule changes, thereby reducing work-family conflict and financial insecurity. We find little evidence that they have this effect on the sample overall, but do find suggestive positive evidence for food service workers. The small sample limits our power to detect statistically significant differences and demands caution in drawing firm conclusions. In ongoing work, we will conduct propensity score matching to better identify our comparison group and reanalyze data on a larger treatment and comparison sample. We present implications for the broader study and for future efforts to assess the benefits and drawbacks of FWW laws as a means of improving the economic and work-family circumstances of hourly workers.