The Making of Scheduling Standards in the USA

This award was provided as part of NSF’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE)Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program and SBE's Sociology program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Professor Janice Fine at the Rutgers’ School of Management and Labor Relations, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the development of labor scheduling standards in the United States. This research advances scholarly understanding of the politics of scheduling and the making of labor standards at the state and local level. It has the potential to benefit policymakers, workers, employers, and the broader economy by informing future efforts to regulate scheduling and other labor practices. More effective scheduling standards can improve the welfare and performance of workers in hourly jobs, promoting social equity as well as economic competitiveness.A growing body of research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences documents the detrimental effects of unstable work schedules on the well-being and economic security of workers and their families. Labor advocates and policymakers have sought to remedy this problem by advancing scheduling standards, often called "Fair Workweek" laws, that establish new worker rights and employer obligations with respect to how work is allocated and workers compensated for their time. Yet little prior research has examined how scheduling standards develop—where they come from, why they take the forms they do, and what accounts for their success or failure—in the various cities and states to take up the issue. The PI proposes a comparative study of eight jurisdictions where fair workweek campaigns occurred between 2014 and 2021, including cases where legislation was enacted (San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Oregon, Chicago, and Philadelphia) and where it was rejected (DC and Minneapolis). This study seeks to explain the different outcomes of these campaigns in relation to their institutional context, political coalitions, discursive frames, and mobilizing tactics. It will draw on 80 in-depth interviews (68 newly conducted plus 12 pilot interviews) with policymakers and stakeholders in each jurisdiction. These original data will be supplemented with evidence from legislative proceedings, news reports, social media, and other forms of public discourse related to scheduling standards. The PI plans to archive and share these data on the Qualitative Data Repository hosted at Syracuse University.This project allows for new insight into fundamental issues of economic governance. It presents a rare opportunity to study how private labor practices come to be framed as a social problem in need of public regulation and how this regulation emerges through a series of state and local initiatives. The PI develops the concept of “progressive labor standards” to theorize the targeted coverage yet expansive framing of fair workweek laws, clarifying the political appeal as well as practical limitations of this approach to regulation. Through this research, the PI will evaluate the hypothesis that narrow targeting of specific industries is a necessary condition for successful scheduling standards. A better understanding of the relation between the scope and efficacy fair workweek campaigns could inform regulatory efforts in other policy domains where sectoral differences are important, such as workplace health and safety and gender discrimination.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.