However, the San Francisco legislation only applies to what the law terms "formula retail establishments"—national and international chains. Seattle's ordinance is likely to be scaled differently, probably similar to the way its minimum-wage legislation is being implemented: The $15 hourly wage currently only applies to chain workers, but the next several years will see gradual wage increases for workers at all businesses, with the full $15 applied across the board in 2019.

This ambitious scheduling agenda—which eventually will cover all businesses, instead of just chains—faces some logistical challenges. While the large chains regulated under the San Francisco law are the most likely to use demand-based scheduling systems and cause disruption for their workers, small businesses and local chains’ methods can be burdensome too.

For their part, many managers and owners of Seattle’s small businesses think that regulation is unfeasible, not to mention undesirable. Some of those managers (and many restaurant workers I’ve spoken to) have pointed out that plenty of workers are fine with short-notice scheduling. In particular, restaurants have strong incentives for workers to come in day of, based on demand, and there are plenty of tipped workers who earn most of their income from gratuity, not hourly wages, and who have no problem swapping shifts or giving up hours last-minute if they’ve met their weekly financial goals. These workers might find that the status quo is fine, and implementing strong scheduling regulations might limit their ability to customize their schedules.

With those constraints in mind, Seattle City Councilmember Lorena González, who is involved in putting together the legislation, says that it is likely to be scaled to allow small businesses some time to implement the new policy. But she wants to make sure that larger companies that can afford to implement the regulations right away are above the size cutoff they establish. "If we want this legislation to impact workers who are most susceptible to these practices, where do we draw the line?" González says. "Is it going to be 250 full-time employees, 250 employees or more? Is it going to be 500 employees or more, or is the number somewhere else?” She also has pledged to allow workers to swap shifts and maintain the flexibility they desire, but achieving that goal while regulating businesses citywide will be a hard balance to strike.

When Seattle produced its minimum-wage legislation, its mayor and city council put together a committee comprised of labor and business leaders to hash things out. The process was difficult, but it did produce a piece of legislation supported by a citywide consensus.

But while city leaders are trying to put together a similar process to regulate scheduling, it hasn’t yet been as productive as the minimum-wage effort. At recent city council meetings, some restaurateurs disputed the notion that insecure scheduling is even a problem in the first place. Other business leaders acknowledge the difficulties that hourly workers face in scheduling but are dubious about the push to regulate the practice. For instance, Howard Wright, who is on the board of directors of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and is a co-owner of the Space Needle, was a member of the minimum-wage committee, but wants the council to stay away from passing a scheduling ordinance. In particular, Wright points to the need of businesses to deal with unexpected surges in demand. He says that if the law is inevitable, he hopes the Chamber and other business groups will get to weigh in.