Fair scheduling could soon be the norm at Canada’s largest food retailer.

Following a new deal struck with union United Food and Commercial Workers, Ontario’s 60 Loblaws Great Food and Superstores is introducing a series of pilots to make part-timers’ schedules more predictable and guarantee them better hours.

The first test, launched this month, provides all part-time workers with 10 days advance notice on scheduling. Previously, they received just three.

In an exclusive interview with the Star, UFCW 1000a president Pearl Sawyer said that could radically alter the lives of the union’s 10,621 part-timer workers.

“Life is so busy,” she said, “And it’s no one size fits all.”

Linda Reid, a 63-year-old part-time clerk at a downtown Toronto Loblaws, said she sees the new provision as a “huge improvement.”

“It’s more family friendly and it gives you more of a heads up.”

The model should be implemented after the eight-to-12-month pilot, as long as both workers and the company are satisfied with it, Sawyer said.

The second pilot, to roll out in September, addresses the issue of availability. In the past, part-time workers — many of whom are juggling other jobs — had to make themselves available to Loblaws from Friday to Sunday, plus one additional weekday. But there was no commensurate guarantee that they would be given hours.

The new pilot will ensure some 50 per cent of part-time staff will now have minimum hour guarantees ranging from 20 to 28 hours a week, based on seniority.

Workers not covered by the guaranteed hours provision will no longer have to make themselves available to the company from Monday to Thursday.

“I think overall it’s going to be a really good change going forward and I think it will benefit a lot of people in the long run,” said 23-year-old Adriana Georgakopoulos, a student at Durham College who works part-time at a Real Canadian Superstore in Whitby.

The final experiment will provide some respite for day-shift workers, who Sawyer says have long complained about being forced to be available from open to close on the weekend. Under the new experiment, they will only have to be available until 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

“Our members are just ecstatic about the concept,” Sawyer said.

Under the terms of its new collective agreement, Loblaws will be obliged to implement the two availability pilots barring any objections from workers.

Although these are pilots — not policy as yet — Sawyer said the company seemed amenable to making what she sees as much-needed change.

Kevin Groh, a spokesperson for Loblaw, said the company felt it was making “good progress” on fair scheduling.

“We spent the last two years working with the UFCW to better understand the challenge and to test solutions,” he said. “Our collective findings factored into our latest contract.”

“Ultimately, done right, improvements to scheduling will benefit our colleagues, our customers and our business,” he added.

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The Star has previously highlighted the harmful impact of erratic scheduling on workers lives. Under Ontario’s outdated Employment Standards Act, currently under government review, workers have almost no rights to fair hours or predictable timetables. That leaves collective bargaining as one of the few vehicles for protection.

Last month, retail union Unifor negotiated a bold new deal with grocery chain Metro, guaranteeing all part-time workers in the GTA at least 15 hours of work a week and implementing minimum yearly raises of 25 cents an hour — up to five times higher than the industry standard.

Correction- Aug. 24, 2015: The photo caption with this article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly included the wrong location for Loblaws.