Chicago Fair Workweek Ordinance: Notice, Pay, and Complaints

The Chicago Fair Workweek Ordinance requires covered employers in seven industries to give hourly and lower-paid salaried workers at least 14 days’ written notice of their schedules and to pay extra when shifts change on short notice. It’s codified at Chapter 6-110 of the Chicago Municipal Code and applies to hourly employees earning $32.60 or less per hour and salaried employees earning $62,561.90 or less per year in 2025.¹ If your employer breaks the rules, you can file a complaint with the city and, after that process runs its course, sue.

Who the Law Covers

The ordinance reaches seven industries: building services, healthcare, hotels, manufacturing, restaurants, retail, and warehouse services. Not every business in those sectors qualifies. An employer generally needs at least 100 employees globally, with at least 50 working primarily in Chicago in a covered industry. Nonprofits are covered only at 250 employees or more. Franchise restaurants must have at least 250 employees, 30 locations globally, and own at least four Chicago locations.²

On the worker side, you’re covered if you spend most of your work time in one of those industries, work primarily within Chicago, and earn at or below the income thresholds. The city adjusts those thresholds each year for cost of living.¹ Earn more than the cap and the ordinance doesn’t apply to you, even if your employer and industry otherwise fit.

Schedule Notice and the Good Faith Estimate

Before your first shift, your employer must give you a written good faith estimate of your expected schedule. It has to be specific enough to function as a sample schedule, listing which days you can expect to work, start and end times, and average weekly hours. Listing every shift the business staffs and calling that an estimate doesn’t cut it.² If your actual schedules consistently look nothing like the estimate, that’s worth documenting.

Once you’re on the job, the employer must post or deliver a written schedule at least 14 days before it starts.¹ Delivery can happen on a breakroom wall, through email, or through a scheduling app. What matters is that you actually receive notice within the required window. When the schedule changes after posting, the employer must update the written schedule and get the amended version to you within 24 hours.³

Predictability Pay When the Schedule Changes

When your employer changes your schedule inside the 14-day window, the type of change controls what you’re owed:

If your employer adds hours or shifts the start or end time of a shift, you’re owed one hour of predictability pay at your regular rate on top of wages for time actually worked.
If your employer cuts hours or cancels a shift, you’re owed at least 50% of your regular rate for every hour you lost.

The difference cuts both ways. An added shift costs the employer one hour of predictability pay regardless of how long the shift runs. A cancelled Friday shift costs half pay for every hour that disappeared. Predictability pay must appear in the next regular pay period after the change.¹

When Predictability Pay Isn’t Required

The ordinance lists several situations where no predictability pay is owed. The most common in daily practice are changes you agree to in writing and voluntary shift swaps between coworkers. Trade shifts with a coworker, or ask to leave early and confirm it in writing, and predictability pay isn’t triggered.³

The written-confirmation piece matters. If a manager verbally asks you to come in early and you agree, get that in writing. Without it, a later dispute becomes your word against theirs. Other carve-outs cover natural disasters, utility failures, civil unrest, pandemics, and threats to safety, along with industry-specific exceptions for healthcare emergencies, manufacturing disruptions outside the employer’s control, and certain ticketed and banquet events.³ Employers can also subtract hours for documented disciplinary reasons with just cause, and self-scheduled workers are exempt.

Right to Decline and Right to Rest

You can say no to any hours added to your schedule with less than 14 days’ notice, and your employer can’t punish you for declining.³ Work beyond the posted schedule is meant to be genuinely voluntary.

A separate provision, the right to rest, addresses back-to-back shifts. You can decline any shift that starts less than 10 hours after your previous one ended. If you work it anyway, your employer must pay 1.5 times your regular rate for the entire shift, not just the portion inside the 10-hour window.¹ For a worker earning $18 an hour who takes a quick-turnaround 8-hour shift, that’s $216 instead of $144.

Extra Hours Go to Existing Part-Timers First

Before hiring new workers or bringing in temporary staff, employers must offer additional available hours to existing part-time employees who are qualified to do the work.⁴ The employer has to communicate those opportunities through a transparent process and give current staff a fair shot based on availability and skills. If you’ve been asking for more hours and your employer bypasses you to bring in a temp agency, that’s the pattern the rule targets.

Retaliation Is Separately Punishable

Chicago’s labor standards prohibit employers from taking adverse action against a worker for exercising rights under the ordinance, including reporting violations, filing a complaint, or declining unscheduled hours. Prohibited retaliation covers termination, denial of promotion, negative evaluations, punitive schedule changes, and less desirable assignments tied to the worker asserting their rights.⁵

Retaliation carries its own fine of $1,000 to $1,500 per offense on top of any penalty for the underlying scheduling violation.⁵ Many workers know their rights but fear the fallout of using them; the law makes that fallout separately punishable.

Filing a Complaint and Suing

Employers who violate the ordinance face fines of $300 to $500 per employee per violation, and each day a violation continues counts as a separate offense. Workers also have a private right of action, but you can’t go straight to court. First you file a written complaint with the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, give the employer a chance to contest or cure the violation, and receive written notice that the Department considers your complaint closed. Only then can you sue. The statute of limitations for both administrative complaints and lawsuits is two years from the date of the violation.⁶

You can file by calling 311, using the CHI 311 app, or completing the Office of Labor Standards Complaint Form on the city’s website.¹ The form asks for the employer’s legal name and address, the dates and times of the violations, your role and hourly wage, and what happened. You can also submit it by email to BACPlaborstandards@cityofchicago.org, by fax, or by mail to 2350 W. Ogden Ave., Chicago, IL 60608.⁷

Before you file, gather evidence. Save your original posted schedules and any amendments, screenshots of scheduling-app notifications, texts about shift changes, and pay stubs showing whether predictability pay was included. Employers must keep scheduling and compliance records for at least three years, and you have the right to request your own records. Making that request early creates a paper trail and may prompt the employer to take the issue seriously. Once the Office of Labor Standards has your complaint, they’ll schedule an intake interview and may review payroll and interview coworkers.

Union Contracts Can Waive the Ordinance

If you’re covered by a collective bargaining agreement, the ordinance can be waived, but only in “clear and unambiguous terms.” A general management-rights clause or a vague reference to city ordinances isn’t enough. The CBA must specifically name the Chicago Fair Workweek Ordinance and state which provisions are being waived.⁸ Without that specific language, the ordinance still applies to you.

1
City of Chicago. Fair Workweek
2
Chicago Office of Labor Standards. Fair Workweek Frequently Asked Questions
3
American Legal Publishing. Chicago Municipal Code 6-110-050 – Schedule Changes
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City of Chicago. Fair Workweek Knowledge
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American Legal Publishing. Chicago Municipal Code 6-100-030 – Retaliation Prohibited
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American Legal Publishing. Chicago Municipal Code 6-110-140 – Private Cause of Action
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City of Chicago. Office of Labor Standards Complaint Form
8
American Legal Publishing. Chicago Municipal Code 6-110-030 – Application to Collective Bargaining Agreements