Sponsors (21)
Official title: Permit employees to request changes to their work schedules without fear of retaliation and to ensure that employers consider these requests, and to require employers to provide more predictable and stable schedules for employees in certain occupations with evidence of unpredictable and unstable scheduling practices that negatively affect employees, and for other purposes.
Introduced December 17, 2025 by Elizabeth Warren · Last progress December 17, 2025
The bill trades stronger scheduling rights, pay protections, enforcement, and clearer coverage for millions of hourly and caregiving workers against higher costs, administrative burdens, and regulatory complexity for employers (especially small businesses), which may reduce hiring or shift scheduling practices to avoid compliance.
Millions of hourly workers in retail, food service, hospitality, cleaning, warehouses and similar sectors gain substantially more predictable schedules, advance written notice (14 days), pay protections for short-notice changes (predictability pay and penalties), split-shift pay, and on-hire/annual estimates of minimum monthly hours, improving income stability and planning.
Parents, caregivers, and employees with serious health conditions (including adult-child caregivers and domestic-partner situations) obtain clearer, broader rights to schedule adjustments and protections that preserve FMLA/ADA rights, making it easier to balance work and caregiving or medical needs.
Workers receive stronger enforcement and remedies: private lawsuits for lost wages/benefits with fee-shifting, extended limitations for willful violations, administrative enforcement authority for the Secretary (investigations, subpoenas, penalties), anti-retaliation protections, and required rights notices to inform employees how to file complaints.
Employers — especially small businesses in low-margin sectors — face significant new labor and administrative costs (predictability pay, short-rest premiums, split-shift pay, penalties, written scheduling, itemized payroll reporting, recordkeeping and interactive processes) that could raise prices, reduce hiring, cut hours, or trigger layoffs.
To avoid higher costs and penalties, some employers may reduce hiring, limit hours or flexibility, shift to more part-time/on-call staffing or automation, or restrict opportunities for extra shifts — which could shrink job opportunities or earnings for some low-wage and job-seeking workers.
The Act creates compliance complexity, regulatory uncertainty, and litigation risk because of overlapping federal/state/contractual standards, broad 'bona fide business reason' categories, agency rulemaking deadlines (including a rushed 180‑day timeline), and potential private‐and‐agency enforcement interactions that could spawn lawsuits and uneven enforcement.
Based on analysis of 13 sections of legislative text.
Establishes federal minimum predictable-scheduling rights: 14-day advance schedules, pay for short-notice changes, limits on short-turnaround shifts, a right-to-request process, and enforcement tools.
Creates a federal floor of worker scheduling protections for employees in covered industries by requiring advance written schedules, pay remedies for late schedule changes, limits on short-turnaround shifts, and a formal right to request schedule changes for caregiving, health, education, or secondary employment. It directs the Department of Labor and other federal offices to run education, data collection, and rulemaking (including designating covered occupations) and creates enforcement tools including administrative investigations, civil penalties, and a private right of action for affected workers.