Pennsylvania scheduling laws

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2 of these 5 rules apply regardless of industry; 3 bind only certain sectors, and each one says which. Most US predictive-scheduling law is municipal, so where a rule comes from a city ordinance its name says so — a company can easily have one location covered and two not.

• Philadelphia Fair Workweek — 14-day advance notice

  Phila. Code ch. 9-4600

  Covered employers must give written notice of an employee's schedule at least 14 days ahead. Coverage is narrow but catches chains: hospitality, retail, and food-service establishments with 250+ employees worldwide AND 30+ locations worldwide, franchises included.

  Applies to:RestaurantsRetail

  In Weekwright: Publishing a week is an explicit, audit-logged action with a timestamp, so 'when was this posted' has an answer that does not depend on anyone's memory. Every subsequent change to a published week is logged with its before and after.

• Philadelphia Fair Workweek — predictability pay

  Phila. Code ch. 9-4600

  One hour of predictability pay at the employee's regular rate when the employer adds time to a shift or changes its date, time, or location with no loss of hours. Cancelling or cutting hours carries larger premiums. It is owed on top of ordinary wages.

  Applies to:RestaurantsRetail

  In Weekwright: Predictability-pay liability is reconstructed from the audit log — what was published, what changed, and when — rather than rebuilt from memory at the end of the period. Weekwright does not compute the premium for you; it preserves the record you need to compute it.

• Philadelphia Fair Workweek — 9 hours between shifts

  Phila. Code ch. 9-4600

  Employees are entitled to at least 9 hours of rest between shifts spanning two workdays. Scheduling a pair without that gap requires the employee's written consent AND a $40 premium — the clopening rule, priced.

  Applies to:RestaurantsRetail

  In Weekwright: MIN_REST_HOURS_BETWEEN_SHIFTS set to 9 with BLOCKING severity refuses the publish outright, which is the right default when the alternative costs $40 and a signature. Set it to WARNING instead if you genuinely intend to pay the premium, and the audit log records who accepted it.

• Statewide: no state predictive-scheduling law

  Outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has no predictive-scheduling requirement and follows the federal baseline of 1.5x beyond 40 hours in a workweek. A Pittsburgh or Allentown operator is not covered by the Fair Workweek rules above, and neither is a Philadelphia employer under the 250-employee or 30-location thresholds.

  In Weekwright: Compliance rules are configured per organization, so a multi-city operator can run the strict Philadelphia rest rule for those locations without imposing it on the rest of the estate. MAX_HOURS_PER_WEEK covers the federal weekly baseline everywhere else.

• Breaks are mandated for minors only

  Pa. Child Labor Act

  Pennsylvania imposes no meal or rest break requirement on adult employees. For minors the Child Labor Act is specific: no minor may be employed more than five hours continuously without an interval of at least 30 minutes, and no period shorter than 30 minutes counts as interrupting a continuous stretch — so two 15-minute breaks do not reset the clock.

  In Weekwright: The 30-minute-minimum detail is the trap, and break punches carry their own start and end times so a too-short break is visible as a duration rather than just a tick. Attach a per-member rule to your under-18 staff and the conflict detector applies it to them without constraining everyone else.

Again, because it matters: this is not legal advice. It is a reading aid over primary sources, maintained by a software company rather than a law firm. It surfaces obvious gaps so you can act on them — it does not tell you whether a specific ordinance applies to your specific business. Consult counsel for that. Found something out of date? hello@weekwright.com — a correction to a primary source is welcome from anyone, customer or not.