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Last night, an updated version of the Chicago Fair Workweek Ordinance was introduced in the Chicago City Council. Prior versions of this ordinance were proposed in 2017 and 2018, but failed to gain traction.  

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s era of reform has begun with a big victory. On Wednesday, May 29, Lightfoot set the stage for historic change at City Hall as the City Council approved her entire list of aldermen who will serve as new chairmen of the council’s 18 committees.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot snagged a major victory Wednesday, elevating her City Council allies to key leadership roles and putting her political rival in his place.

A day before Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was set to preside over her first City Council meeting, the former federal prosecutor on Tuesday again took aim at curbing aldermanic power and promised to push long-stalled ethics reforms.

Declaring that “deliberate policy choices made in decades past by people in power in this town” have impoverished much of the South and West sides, Mayor Lori Lightfoot today laid out an extensive—and, in part, controversial—agenda as to how she intends to reverse that inequity.

Wages and many other aspects of employment affect the economic well-being of workers and their families, including hours worked, employee benefits, and work scheduling. In 2017, most adults were optimistic about their future labor market opportunities. Three in 10 adults work in the “gig economy,” though generally as a supplemental source of income.

Armed with a new study that shows the devastating impact of “just-in-time scheduling,” a coalition of alderman and union leaders on Thursday made a renewed push for a “fair work-week” they called a “basic human rights issue.”

We encourage businesses to adopt fair scheduling practices that offer a win-win for both them and their employees.

Protecting workers who bear the brunt of last-minute changes to their schedules, some even after they’ve shown up to work, is a practice that many businesses already do. If you hire a catering company or book an event space, and cancel at the last minute, most caterers or event spaces keep deposits to cover the built-in costs of doing business. The same protection should be granted to workers who are told to go home or have to set up extra child care coverage, or skip a class or training program, when their schedules change.