Tuesday afternoon hearing on statewide secure scheduling bill in House Labor & Workplace Standards committee
HB 1491 would ensure balanced, flexible schedules for hundreds of thousands of food, coffee, and retail workers in our state
Big national chains like McDonald’s, Walmart, and The Olive Garden are driving workers’ lives out of balance. They’re demanding 24/7 availability — even for part-time jobs. They’re not giving people the hours they need to pay the rent. And they’re denying workers the stability and flexibility they need to care for their families, contribute to their communities, and live balanced lives.
HB 1491 would change that by ensuring that hundreds of thousands of people in our state who work for large food, coffee, restaurant, and retail chains get more flexibility and balance at work, including advance notice, access to additional hours, more input & flexibility, and no mandatory clopening shifts.
Who: Food & retail workers from across the state
What: Testify before the House Labor & Workplace Standards Committee about their unstable, unpredictable working lives, how secure scheduling would help, and why our time counts, too
When: Tuesday, February 5th, 3:30pm
Where: State Capitol Campus, John L. O'Brien Building, House Hearing Room E
The secure scheduling bill introduced by Rep. Macri (HB 1491) would ensure people who work for big food & retail chains are provided:
Two weeks’ notice of shift schedules.
Access to additional hours for current employees before new jobs are posted.
Input into work schedules, and more flexibility to accommodate caregiving, schooling, and other major life needs.
No mandatory clopening shifts (working the closing shift one night then an opening shift the next morning).
And more!
More information
The need for secure scheduling is clear. A recent report from two of the nation’s top academic researchers on work schedules looked at data provided by several thousand workers from large chains in Washington State and published a comprehensive new report titled Working in the Service Sector in Washington State, which shows that:
More than half of people working working for large food and retail chains in Washington have variable or rotating schedules, with a 31% variation between weeks with the most hours and weeks with the fewest hours.
Almost four in ten worked a clopen in the last month (a closing shift one night followed by an opening shift the next morning), and 21% worked on-call.
About 70% of part-time workers want to work more hours.
A quarter of workers get less than week’s notice of their schedules; seven in ten struggle with their caregiving responsibilities because of their schedules
Seattle passed its secure scheduling law in 2016. Similar laws have also been passed in San Francisco, New York City, Oregon, Philadelphia, and other jurisdictions over the last few years.
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Contact: Sage Wilson, Working Washington: sage@workingwa.org
Working Washington is the voice for workers in our state. Working Washington fast food strikers sparked the fight that won Seattle’s first-in-the-nation $15 minimum wage. Working Washington baristas and fast food workers led the successful campaign for secure scheduling in Seattle, and our members across the state helped drive forward Initiative 1433 to raise the minimum wage and provide paid sick days. We successfully drove Amazon to sever ties with the right-wing lobby group ALEC and improve conditions in their sweatshop warehouses, and got Starbucks to address inequities in their corporate parental leave policy. And we continue to make history by organizing for the landmark statewide paid family leave law in 2017, and winning the groundbreaking Seattle Domestic Workers Bill of Rights last summer. For more information, including our press kit, visit workingWA.org.