Panel Paper:
Secure Scheduling in Seattle: Baseline Evidence
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
The nature of paid work is transforming rapidly. These changes are particularly dramatic in the large and growing service sector where employers have embraced scheduling practices in which workers’ hours and work schedules vary day-to-day with little advance notice or worker input.
The Seattle City Council voted in September of 2016 to approve a law that aims to reduce schedule instability and unpredictably by requiring greater advance notice of schedules and access to more work hours for service sector workers employed by large retail and food chains located within city limits. That law will take effect on July 1st of 2017.
This coming change to law in Seattle offers a unique opportunity to estimate if labor law can effectively regulate work hour instability and to estimate the effects of unpredictable scheduling on workers and their families. However, existing data either lacks large samples of employees at specific companies and in specific cities or useful outcome measures.
We propose an innovative and cost-effective method for collecting this data. Our insight is that service sector workers can be effectively recruited to surveys through audience-targeted advertising on Facebook. Acting as an "advertiser,” the research team will purchase and place ads in the newsfeeds of Facebook users working at retail and food establishments in Seattle and in comparison cities before the ordinance goes into effect. Users who click on recruitment ads are routed to a consent and then an online survey. We collect a rich set of data on scheduling practices and wages, household economic security, worker health and wellbeing, parenting behaviors, and demographics.
Our paper will use the baseline (“before”) data to describe the associations between scheduling practices and health and wellbeing outcomes. Subsequently, we will collect another round of data following the implementation of the law and use these two waves of data to estimate the effects of the Secure Scheduling ordinance on scheduling practices as well as on worker and family health and wellbeing.
