PunchFair Workweek Laws in 2026: Predictability Pay, Clopening Premiums, and the Timesheet That Proves Them
Fair Workweek Laws in 2026: Predictability Pay, Clopening Premiums, and the Timesheet That Proves Them
The short answer: In a growing list of places, moving a shift costs money. One state and roughly a dozen cities require covered employers to post schedules 14 days ahead and pay a premium every time the employer changes one after that. A second rule adds pay when someone closes at night and opens the next morning with too little rest in between. Both rules are settled by the same evidence: the exact minute the last shift ended and the exact minute the next one began. That is a timekeeping question, not a scheduling question, and it is where these cases are won or lost. Punch makes that record automatic.
Where These Laws Actually Apply
Oregon is still the only state with a statewide predictive scheduling law. Everything else is city or county level: San Francisco, Emeryville, Berkeley, the City of Los Angeles, unincorporated Los Angeles County, Chicago, Evanston, Seattle, Philadelphia, and New York City. Similar bills keep appearing in other state legislatures. As of August 2026, none of them had become law.
Coverage thresholds are high on purpose. These ordinances were written for large chains, not for a five-person crew. But the thresholds count employees worldwide, not locally, so a franchise operator with one Seattle store and a parent company of 500 people is covered, and a growing multi-location business can cross the line without noticing.
Oregon (ORS 653.412 to 653.490). Applies to retail, hospitality, and food service employers with 500 or more employees worldwide. Written schedule posted at least 14 calendar days before the first day it covers, including on-call shifts. New hires get a written good faith estimate of the median hours they can expect per month.
Seattle (SMC 14.22). Retail and food service establishments with 500 or more employees worldwide. Full service restaurants must also have 40 or more locations worldwide. Schedules posted 14 days ahead. Records kept for three years to show compliance.
New York City. Fast food employers with 30 or more locations nationwide get a 14-day notice rule. Retail employers with 20 or more employees get 72 hours. The retail side also bans on-call scheduling outright.
Chicago. Coverage turns on two tests: 100 or more employees globally with at least 50 of them covered, and a per-employee wage line, which as of July 1, 2026 is $33.85 per hour or $64,945.55 per year. Restaurants have their own bar of 250 employees and 30 locations. Seven industries are covered, including restaurants, retail, hotels, healthcare, manufacturing, warehouse services, and building services. Amended rules took effect June 1, 2026.
Philadelphia (Chapter 9-4600). Retail, hospitality, and food service employers with 250 or more employees globally and 30 or more locations. Advance notice rose from 10 days to 14 days on January 1, 2021.
What Triggers Predictability Pay
Once the schedule is posted, employer-initiated changes carry a price. Oregon's rule is the clearest published version of the pattern, and the other jurisdictions follow the same shape with different numbers.
One hour of extra pay at the regular rate when the employer adds more than 30 minutes of work to a shift, changes the date or the start or end time with no loss of hours, or schedules an additional work or on-call shift.
Half the regular rate for every scheduled hour not worked when the employer subtracts hours before or after the employee reports, changes a shift so hours are lost, cancels a shift, or leaves someone on an on-call shift without calling them in.
Seattle mirrors this: one hour of pay for hours added or a time change, and half the hours not worked when someone is sent home early or is never called in from on-call. New York City assigns a schedule of premiums from $10 to $75 per change, depending on the type and the notice given. Chicago pays one hour of predictability pay per impacted shift when the date or time moves without a loss of hours.
Two things matter for anyone running the payroll. First, the premium is on top of wages for hours actually worked, not instead of them. Second, changes the employee requests in writing do not trigger it. Oregon says so explicitly. That distinction lives or dies on documentation.
Oregon also carves out changes caused by events outside the employer's control, including floods, earthquakes, wildfires, snowstorms, extreme temperatures, fires, and civil unrest.
The Clopening Rule Is a Timekeeping Rule
The second half of these laws is the rest period between a closing shift and the next opening shift, and it is the part small operators trip over most often.
Oregon gives employees a right to 10 hours off following the end of the previous day's work or on-call shift. If someone works inside that window, the hours are paid at one and one half times the regular rate. Seattle uses the same 10-hour line and the same time and a half. Philadelphia sets 9 hours of rest and requires written consent plus a premium commonly cited at $40 when an employee works through it. New York City sets 11 hours, requires written consent, and attaches a $100 premium.
Look at what that actually asks of you. To know whether you owe the premium, you need the real end time of one shift and the real start time of the next, to the minute, for every person. A posted schedule cannot answer it, because the schedule says 10:00 p.m. and the closer left at 10:26. Estimates cannot answer it either. Only a punch record can.
That is why these ordinances land on timekeeping and not just on scheduling software. Seattle spells out the storage half too: keep the records for three years.
If You Are Under the Threshold, You Are Not Off the Hook
Most small field and service businesses are nowhere near 250 or 500 employees. Two things still apply.
Reporting time pay is a separate and much older body of law. Several states require pay when an employee shows up for a scheduled shift and is sent home early or given nothing to do, with no headcount threshold at all. If you have ever sent a crew home at 8:30 a.m. because the material never showed, you have already met the rule that fair workweek laws generalize.
And the compliance posture is identical either way. Whether you owe a premium or simply want to pay the week correctly, the requirement is the same: a per person, per day, per minute record of when work started, when it stopped, and when the unpaid meal fell, kept long enough to answer a question raised months later.
How Punch Handles It
Punch is built to make that record without anyone having to think about it.
Employees punch in and punch out from their phones in seconds, and lunch is tracked as its own event, so the unpaid meal never gets folded into the paid shift. Every punch carries its own timestamp, which is exactly the input a rest-period premium is calculated from. The gap between last night's punch out and this morning's punch in is a fact in your data, not a reconstruction.
Punches work offline. A basement, a rural site, a walk-in cooler with no signal still records a real punch that syncs when service returns. Split shifts are supported natively, so a morning segment and an evening return are two clean punched blocks on one day.
Owners and managers review the week in one place and approve or reject in bulk instead of one shift at a time, and the approval is recorded against the shift. Pay periods run weekly or bi-weekly, and overtime is applied automatically against your fixed workweek using Punch's overtime presets for more than 50 countries, including state daily overtime rules where they apply. When the week is approved, Reports export to Excel or QuickBooks CSV, or push straight into QuickBooks Online, so what you pay matches what was punched.
For crews without company phones, a shared iPad kiosk with a PIN turns the shop or the trailer into a punch station. Verification stays private throughout: Punch confirms an on-site punch-in with a job-site geofence on iOS, never facial recognition and never a photo at the punch. A closer coming back in nine hours later should not also have a camera in their face. Trust beats surveillance.
If you also need the schedule side, Crmb. is Punch's office companion for crew scheduling, open shifts, and capacity, sharing the same team and the same data.
Why Punch Beats the Per-Seat Alternatives
Fair workweek exposure scales with headcount, and so do the invoices from ClockShark, Connecteam, Buddy Punch, QuickBooks Time, and Homebase. Every one of them bills per user, so the moment your roster grows toward a coverage threshold, your software bill grows with it, and the reporting that would prove compliance usually sits one tier up or behind an add-on.
Punch prices flat per organization. Every plan includes every feature, from geofenced punch-in to kiosk mode to bulk approvals to QuickBooks Online export, and owners are always free. Doubling your crew changes your labor cost and nothing else.
The Bottom Line
Fair workweek laws turn a schedule change into a payroll line. Oregon and Seattle put the premium at one hour of pay for an added or moved shift and half the lost hours for a cut one. Rest-period premiums run from time and a half in Oregon and Seattle to a flat $100 in New York City. Every one of those calculations resolves to two timestamps and the distance between them. Post the schedule early, document the changes the employee asked for, and keep a punch record precise enough to settle the question without a debate.
Start with Punch and let every shift keep its own timestamps.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Fair workweek and predictive scheduling rules vary by jurisdiction, industry, and employer size, and they change. Confirm your obligations with the enforcing agency in your city or state, or with a qualified professional.