Funded on September 1, 2022

Frontline service-sector workers cope with low wages, limited access to paid leave, and difficult working conditions. Compounding these challenges, these workers face unstable and unpredictable work schedules that often vary from day-to-day and week-to-week. The investigators’ ongoing research through the Shift Project has found that exposure to such scheduling practices is associated with worse health and well-being and diminished well-being for their children. These experiences also vary by race and ethnicity, with workers of color, especially women of color, significantly more exposed to these scheduling practices. These experiences were exacerbated for frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This project will provide rigorous evidence on whether secure-scheduling policies that raise the floor on work-scheduling conditions can also reduce racial inequality in these work conditions and, in so doing, reduce racial inequality in downstream health and well-being outcomes. The project will also investigate the effect of secure scheduling laws implemented in five cities and one state on the following:

  • work schedule stability and predictability
  • racial inequality in work schedule stability and predictability
  • racial inequality in downstream outcomes of worker well-being, economic insecurity, and work-life conflict