To cheers and bows, City Council unanimously approves predictable scheduling ordinance

The Chicago City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to approve an ordinance requiring that many lower-paid employees receive advance notice of their schedules. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

After a two-and-a-half-year battle that spanned two administrations and pitted business against labor, Chicago’s low-wage workers finally have the advance scheduling notice they need to arrange for child care and give predictability to their paychecks.

And Mayor Lori Lightfoot has a hard-earned political victory to add to her list of 100-day accomplishment.

The City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to give Chicago what proponents call the strongest work scheduling ordinance of any large U.S. city.

The groundbreaking nature of the ordinance—and the key role Lightfoot played in prodding business and labor to give a little— was duly noted before the final vote.

The mayor predicted the ordinance would be “truly transformative” to working parents. She recalled, yet again, the struggles her own working mother had trying to arrange child care and make ends meet as employers constantly changed her work schedule.

Lightfoot acknowledged the ordinance was a “big tough lift” for business, labor and aldermen and said the result of that hard work is the “most expansive” scheduling ordinance in the nation. She acknowledged the city must use data analytics to build an “infrastructure” to ride herd over the ordinance and monitor its impact on various industries.

When Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) warned about the impact on “safety-net hospitals,” Lightfoot said their primary concern is Medicaid reimbursements. She promised to work with those safety-net hospitals to help solve that problem.

When all the speeches ended, a triumphant Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th), chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Workforce Development, got a standing ovation from her colleagues and the mayor’s heartfelt thanks.

“I can’t give you a bottle of champagne, but I’m going to give you a bottle of South Side hot sauce,” Garza told Lightfoot, holding up a bottle of the stuff.

That prompted Ald. Nick Sposato (38th) to shout, “As long as it’s [worth] under $50.”

Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th), chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Workforce Development, presented Mayor Lori Lightfoot with “a bottle of South Side hot sauce” after a “fair workweek” ordinance was approved Wednesday.

Hospital workers who will be helped by a new ordinance requiring advance notice of their schedules were among those invited to a City Hall press conference on Wednesday, when the City Council approved the ordinance.