Dive Brief:

• New York City Mayor DeBlasio and several advocate groups gathered recently to show support for the introduction of “Fair Workweek” legislation, designed to ensure that 65,000 hourly employees in the fast food industry receive fair notification on work hours. 
• Currently, employers nationwide aren’t required to provide their hourly employees with advance notice of upcoming shifts. As a result, too many families can't budget in advance, plan for education or family care, or secure a necessary second job, according to advocates.
• The New York City event echoes the demands of coalition of New York-based advocates who launched a national campaign on Sept. 6. The groups — the Center for Popular Democracy, the Rockefeller Foundation and the online organization Purpose — are asking for scheduling at least two weeks in advance, eliminating on-call assignments that leave employees "scrambling for child care and unable to hold second jobs with uncertain paychecks."

Dive Insight:

Employers do realize that predictability and fairness are reasonable demands, but more often than not, labor cost (and in some cases, labor shortage) creates problems when trying to create better schedules. Frontline managers are expected to create the schedules while also trying to keep costs down, and balancing the two expectations isn't always successful.

What it will take is better workforce planning, with some technology solutions already available to help make that happen, say experts. Also, there are potential negative legal and compliance outcomes for employers who don't follow state and local laws that already require "reporting pay" time be allowed.