Across the country, working people struggling on the frontlines of America’s service economy are standing up for jobs that deliver stability and respect. Millions of working people scramble with ever-changing workweeks that cause volatile incomes and strain families – making it hard to make ends meet and impossible to get ahead.

While the conservative right stokes America’s popular imagination of a “good middle-class job” by glorifying the manufacturing sector and the hope of infrastructure employment, the truth is that the United States’ economy is driven by the service sector – retail, hospitality, food service and healthcare represent 80 percent of U.S. employment and a significant portion of our electorate. Preliminary analysis shows that the retail workforce alone makes up an estimated 6 percent of America’s voting eligible population.

From Oregon to New York City, people are coming together to set wage and hour standards that recognize the essential role of the service sector to delivering opportunity and prosperity for working families. New polling shows that 3 in 4 Americans support fair workweek policies that deliver reliable hours with balanced schedules. For all these reasons, employers and policymakers are taking bold measures to address our country’s work-hours crisis as an essential part of a good jobs strategy.

• Greg Noth, Wyss Foundation
• Emma Oppenheim, Open Society Foundations
• Carrie Gleason, Center for Popular Democracy’s Fair Workweek Initiative
• Jeff Anderson, UFCW Local 555 & Working Families
• Gordon Mar, Jobs with Justice

• Fair Workweek Initiative: http://www.fairworkweek.org/
• Washington Post: Fast-food Workers Learn Their Hours On the Fly. Oregon Wants to Change That
• Huffington Post: Oregon Passes Pioneering Worker-Rights Bill
• Racked: America’s Massive Retail Workforce is Tired of Being Ignored
• The Hill (Op-Ed – Carrie Gleason): What does the working class want? Better schedules.
• San Francisco Chronicle: Emeryville fair workweek ordinance takes effect
• Seattle Times: Seattle’s ‘secure scheduling’ rewrites work rules at stores, restaurants