Which Predictive Scheduling Laws Cover a Hotel, and What Oregon, Chicago, and Philadelphia Require

A housekeeper calls in sick on a Thursday afternoon. Your duty manager covers that sick call, and in 3 US jurisdictions your hotel now owes the replacement an extra hour of pay. In Seattle and New York City you owe nothing at all, because neither ordinance was written to cover hotels.

Hotel groups routinely learn that order the wrong way round. They write a careful scheduling policy for a city that never covered them, and none for the cities that do. The policy that exists covers nothing, and the obligation that exists has no policy.

Run properties in Portland, Chicago and Philadelphia and you are working under 3 separate scheduling regimes with no federal one above them. Each sets its own notice period and its own rest period. None of those 3 regimes defers to the others.

Directors of operations in hospitality and travel usually meet those regimes through a summary that groups them under hospitality, which is where the trouble starts. Scheduling compliance is a question about industry definitions before it is one about scheduling practice. So the first thing to check is whether an ordinance names hotels at all.

Why the Word Hospitality Misleads Hotel Operators

Coverage is decided by a definition inside each ordinance, and the word hospitality does most of the damage in those definitions. An ordinance can be described in the press as covering hospitality workers while its own text names only restaurants. The press summary and the statutory text are 2 different objects.

A hotel operator reading that coverage summary has no way to tell them apart. The distance between the description and the definition is where the wrong policy gets adopted. The summary itself is accurate, about a law never written for that operator.

Seattle and New York City illustrate how far that gap goes. Seattle's Office of Labor Standards states that its ordinance covers hourly employees at retail and food services establishments with 500 or more employees worldwide. A hotel sits outside that definition however large it is.

New York City's Fair Workweek Law reads the same way. Its Department of Consumer and Worker Protection states that the law ends unfair and inconsistent scheduling practices in the fast food and retail industry. A hotel appears nowhere in either of those descriptions.

How to Check Whether an Ordinance Covers Your Property

The practical test is short:

• Find the definition of a covered employer or covered industry in the text of the ordinance itself.
• Check whether hotels, lodging, or a NAICS code beginning 7211 appears in that definition.
• Check the employee threshold, and whether it counts employees worldwide or only in the jurisdiction.

That third question catches more operators than the first two, because a threshold counted worldwide includes groups whose local headcount looks small. A 40-room property is not exempt when its parent company employs several hundred people in other states. Oregon is the clearest example of how that arithmetic works.

Oregon, the Only Statewide Law That Covers Hotels

Oregon reaches hotels by naming the industry and then setting a threshold that most groups clear. The Bureau of Labor and Industries states that the rights apply to retail, hospitality and food services employers that employ 500 or more people worldwide. That worldwide count includes chains and integrated enterprises. A 3-property group in Portland with 80 local staff is covered if the parent company employs 500 people anywhere.

Those obligations are set out statute by statute:

1. ORS 653.436 requires a work schedule in writing at least 14 calendar days before the first day of the schedule.
2. ORS 653.428 requires a written good faith estimate at hire, stating the median hours the employee can expect in an average one-month period and explaining the voluntary standby list.
3. ORS 653.442 prohibits scheduling within the first 10 hours after the previous day's shift unless the employee requests or consents, and requires one and one-half times the regular rate for hours worked in that period.

Within those statutes, 2 details are easy to get wrong:

• Count your employees worldwide before you decide Oregon does not apply, because a small local footprint gives no exemption.
• Stop looking for a Portland ordinance once you have the state rule, since ORS 653.490 addresses preemption of local scheduling requirements.

Chicago settles the same question in one line of its ordinance, by naming the industries it covers. An operator there never has to argue about whether a hotel counts as hospitality. Its thresholds are also lower than Oregon's, so more properties are covered.

Chicago, Where Hotels Are 1 of 7 Named Industries

Chicago removes that definitional question from the argument entirely. The city states that employees are covered if they work in 1 of 7 covered industries, which are building services, healthcare, hotels, manufacturing, restaurants, retail, and warehouse services. Those 7 named industries leave you nothing to interpret.

Those named industries come with thresholds narrower than Oregon's, running on 2 axes:

• The Office of Labor Standards states that a covered employer employs 100 or more employees across all locations inside and outside Chicago, and that the figure is 250 employees for not-for-profit corporations.
• Check the earnings cap the city sets and adjusts as well, because your salaried managers can be outside the ordinance while your hourly staff are inside it.

An employee inside the ordinance on both axes receives a short list:

1. Advance notice of the work schedule.
2. The right to decline previously unscheduled hours.
3. 1 hour of predictability pay for any shift change within 14 days.
4. The right to rest by declining work hours less than 10 hours after the end of the previous day's shift.

Item 3 is the one that changes daily practice, because a manager filling a sick call inside the 14-day window generates a payment the employer owes. A supervisor who believes the change helps the team has still triggered that payment, and it applies to each shift altered. Philadelphia reaches hotels through a definition written into its own code.

Philadelphia, Which the Coverage Lists Often Miss

Philadelphia is the jurisdiction most often left off a coverage summary. Philadelphia's own code is unambiguous on that same point. The Fair Workweek Employment Standards ordinance defines a hospitality establishment as a hotel or motel under NAICS 721110, which is the census code for hotels and motels. A hotel in Philadelphia is therefore named in the definition itself, and coverage depends only on the employer test.

The covered-employer test is the strictest of the 3. The ordinance limits a covered employer to a retail, hospitality or food services establishment employing 250 or more people across 30 or more locations worldwide. Chains and franchises employing more than 250 in aggregate are counted together. An independent single-property hotel is therefore outside it, while a mid-sized brand is inside.

Inside that covered-employer test, the obligations run parallel to Oregon's with different numbers:

1. Section 9-4602 requires the schedule posted no later than 14 days before the first day of any new schedule, and a written good faith estimate on hiring, revised on a significant change.
2. Section 9-4603 requires 1 hour of predictability pay when the employer adds time or changes a shift's date, time, or location with no loss of hours, and no less than one-half the regular rate for hours subtracted or a shift canceled.
3. Section 9-4604 lets an employee decline hours occurring less than 9 hours after the previous day's shift, with any consent given in writing and revocable in writing at any time.

That written-consent requirement is the one most often missed, because it asks a supervisor to collect a document at the moment they are trying to fill a shift. Consent given verbally does not satisfy section 9-4604, and consent given once can be withdrawn in writing at any time. The same pattern of a document produced at the point of decision appears in all 3 jurisdictions, in different forms.

The Requirements That Repeat Across All 3 Jurisdictions

Read side by side, the 3 regimes ask for the same 4 things with different numbers attached. A group operating in all 3 can therefore write 1 policy and vary the figures by location, which is a smaller job than writing 3 policies. The comparison below sets out the 4 requirements in the order a scheduling manager meets them.

Two features of the comparison above are worth acting on:

• Write the rest period into the policy by location, because the 1-hour difference between Philadelphia and the other 2 is what a single national policy gets wrong.
• Keep the document each row produces, since workforce scheduling compliance is evidenced by records an auditor can read.

None of those rows mentions training, and that absence is worth stating before the next section. The ordinances impose duties on the employer and give rights to the employee, and neither structure requires a course. Each duty is discharged at the moment a shift is written or changed.

Where Corporate Compliance Training Fits, and Where It Does Not

No predictive scheduling law in the United States requires an employer to train anyone. Not one of the 3 ordinances names a training obligation, and any vendor presenting a course as the compliance requirement is selling something the statute does not ask for. That is worth saying plainly before saying anything about courses.

The ordinances place each decision with the people who write your schedules. Your duty manager filling a sick call at 6pm decides whether predictability pay is owed, and your housekeeping supervisor offering an extra shift decides whether written consent is needed. Neither of them reads ordinances, and both make the call in under a minute.

If I were running that group, I would do 4 things in this order:

1. Check which of your properties are covered, working from the definition inside each ordinance.
2. Write 1 scheduling policy with a location column for the figures that differ.
3. Put the 14-day date and the rest-period hours in your scheduling tool, where the decision is made.
4. Train the managers who make the call, and keep the record of who was trained.

Step 4 is where corporate compliance training does specific work, and its role is narrow. KC Library carries wage and hour and scheduling courses written for managers. Those courses are aimed at the duty manager on shift.

That training means the person deciding at 6pm on a Friday knows the 14-day rule and the rest-period hours for their own property. The decision is made once, by 1 person, under time pressure. Nobody is reading an ordinance at that moment.

Where a wider program is being built, our guidance on compliance training and on hospitality harassment training sets out the same approach for other obligations. Training keeps a written policy in use at the point where predictability pay is decided, which is the only place the ordinances are complied with or missed.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Which predictive scheduling laws cover hotels?

Oregon, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Oregon's law applies to retail, hospitality, or food services employers with 500 or more employees worldwide. Chicago names hotels as 1 of 7 covered industries. Philadelphia defines a hospitality establishment as a hotel or motel under NAICS 721110, for employers with 250 or more employees and 30 or more locations worldwide.

2. Does Seattle's or New York City's fair workweek law cover hotels?

No. Seattle's Office of Labor Standards states that its secure scheduling ordinance covers hourly employees at retail and food services establishments with 500 or more employees worldwide. New York City's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection states that its Fair Workweek Law ends scheduling practices in the fast food and retail industry. A hotel appears in neither description.

3. How much advance notice of a schedule does a hotel have to give?

14 days in each covered jurisdiction, expressed slightly differently. Oregon ORS 653.436 requires a written schedule at least 14 calendar days before the first day. Philadelphia section 9-4602 requires posting no later than 14 days before a new schedule. Chicago requires advance notice and pays 1 hour of predictability pay for any change inside 14 days.

4. Is the rest period between shifts the same in all 3 jurisdictions?

No, and the difference is 1 hour. Oregon ORS 653.442 sets 10 hours and requires one and one-half times the regular rate for hours worked in that period. Chicago allows an employee to decline hours less than 10 hours after the previous day's shift. Philadelphia section 9-4604 sets 9 hours and requires any consent to be written and revocable.

5. Do predictive scheduling laws require manager training?

No. None of the 3 ordinances that cover hotels imposes a training requirement, so training is a business decision each employer makes on its own. It matters because the decisions the ordinances govern are made by duty managers and supervisors filling shifts, often in under a minute, and a policy nobody has been taught is a policy that gets missed.

References

1. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. "Predictive scheduling." oregon.gov
2. Oregon Legislature. "Oregon Revised Statutes chapter 653, employee work schedules, ORS 653.412 to 653.490." oregonlegislature.gov
3. City of Chicago. "Fair Workweek." chicago.gov
4. Chicago Office of Labor Standards. "Fair Workweek Ordinance frequently asked questions." chicago.gov
5. The Philadelphia Code. "Chapter 9-4600, Fair Workweek Employment Standards." phila.gov
6. City of Philadelphia. "Fair Workweek." phila.gov
7. Seattle Office of Labor Standards. "Secure Scheduling Ordinance." seattle.gov
8. New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. "Fair Workweek Law." nyc.gov