DOL fact sheet warns McDonald's operators on scheduling penalties, overtime rules

If my manager changes my schedule tonight, could I be owed money tomorrow? In some places, yes. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet 56B says state and local scheduling laws can require predictive scheduling pay, reporting pay or show-up pay when a shift is cut, canceled or changed without enough notice.

That matters in the exact restaurant moments crews know best: an opening shift pulled after you already lined up child care, a midshift cut that sends you home early, or a surprise clopening that leaves you back on the floor after a short break. In those cases, the schedule is not just an internal planning tool. In some jurisdictions, it creates a wage obligation. The practical move is simple: save the posted schedule, any text or app message that changed it, and proof of when you were told not to come in or to leave early.

The rules are not national. Seattle’s Secure Scheduling Ordinance took effect July 1, 2017, and applies to hourly workers at retail and food service employers with 500 or more employees worldwide, plus full-service restaurants with 40 or more full-service locations worldwide. Seattle requires schedules to be posted 14 days in advance and includes premium pay for certain employer-requested changes, including one hour of pay for added hours or changed shift times, and half the hours not worked when a worker is sent home early.

New York City’s Fair Workweek Law took effect November 26, 2017, with fast-food amendments taking effect July 4, 2021. The city requires regular schedules 14 days in advance, premiums for some schedule changes and clopenings, the right to decline extra work, and a process that gives current workers first crack at newly available hours before hiring. Oregon’s predictive scheduling rules also cover large employers in retail, hospitality and food services.

The DOL’s warning is especially relevant because some of those scheduling penalties may be excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act regular rate for overtime purposes if the legal conditions are met. That means the extra pay attached to a bad schedule can be handled differently than straight hourly wages, which is another reason managers need to track local law carefully before they start swapping shifts.

The stakes are not abstract. A 2019 Harvard Shift Project brief found retail and food service employ 17% of American workers. Among 30,000 workers at 120 large retail and food-service firms, two-thirds had less than two weeks’ notice of schedules, 14% had at least one canceled shift in the prior month, 70% had at least one last-minute change, 25% worked on-call shifts and 50% reported clopening shifts separated by less than 11 hours. Three-quarters wanted a more stable schedule.

McDonald’s has already seen how costly this can get. In October 2022, New York City officials said Michell McDonald’s Group, which operated seven Brooklyn locations, agreed to a settlement that brought $1.1 million in penalties and restitution for 511 workers. The case involved clopening shifts without consent, failure to pay the required $100 premiums and the firing of two workers who exercised their rights.

That sits alongside another reality for the chain: McDonald’s franchisees have already been pushed to compete for labor with higher wages, paid time off, backup child care and tuition payments, including a multimillion-dollar investment that covered an emergency child-care pilot. For crews, the message is blunt. In a lot of restaurants, the schedule can hit your wallet twice, once when it changes and again when it changes your overtime math.