Part-Time Workers Get FMLA After 90 Days, Plus New Rights to Desired Hours and Equal Pay

This legislation, titled the Part-Time Worker Bill of Rights Act, is a major overhaul of how employers must treat employees who aren’t on the standard 40-hour track. The core idea is to close the gap between full-time and part-time workers, specifically targeting access to benefits and stability in scheduling. It’s essentially an effort to make sure that choosing part-time work doesn’t automatically mean accepting second-class employee status.

FMLA Access: Moving from a Marathon to a Sprint

Title I takes a sledgehammer to the eligibility requirements for the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for things like having a baby or dealing with a serious health condition. Right now, you usually need to have worked for your employer for 12 months and logged at least 1,250 hours in that year. That second part is what often locks out part-time workers.

This bill scraps the hours requirement entirely and reduces the time requirement to just 90 days of employment (SEC. 101). Think about the real-world impact: a new parent who works 20 hours a week would have previously needed over a year of perfect attendance to hit 1,250 hours. Under this bill, they are eligible for FMLA after just three months. This change applies across the board, including to federal employees, making crucial job protection available to thousands of workers much sooner.

Ending the Part-Time Pay Penalty

Title II introduces a sweeping ban on discrimination based on hours worked. Section 202 states clearly that an employer cannot treat an employee differently because of their scheduled weekly hours or job duration when compared to other employees doing substantially equal work. This applies to your rate of pay, your eligibility to accrue paid time off (PTO) and other benefits on a pro rata basis, and access to promotion opportunities.

What does "pro rata" mean? It means if a full-time employee gets two weeks of PTO, a half-time employee doing the same job must be eligible for one week of PTO. This provision could fundamentally change benefit packages for part-time workers, ensuring they are compensated fairly for their contributions. The only exceptions allowed for pay differences are non-discriminatory reasons like a merit system or seniority, but not simply because one person works 25 hours and the other works 40.

Your Right to the Hours You Need

One of the most significant changes for hourly workers is found in Section 203, which tackles unstable scheduling. This section requires employers (those with 15 or more employees) to get a written statement from every employee detailing their desired number of weekly work hours and availability.

The real kicker is the "offer of work" requirement: an employer must first offer available hours to existing employees who listed those hours as desired before they can hire a new person, use a temporary staffing agency, or contract out the work. If an employer bypasses an existing employee and hires someone new to work hours the existing employee had listed as available, the employer must compensate the existing employee for those missed hours.

There are a few escape routes for the employer—they don't have to offer the hours if the existing employee lacks the necessary qualifications or if scheduling them would trigger overtime pay (at 1.5x the regular rate). But overall, this provision pushes employers to prioritize the stability of their current workforce over external hiring, offering a major boost in income predictability for part-time workers who want more hours.

Enforcement and Employer Burdens

For employers, this bill creates new administrative complexity and potential cost. They now have to track employee preference statements, document why existing staff were passed over for new hires, and potentially pay compensation for missed hours. The Department of Labor will enforce the law, but employees also gain the right to sue employers directly for violations, seeking lost wages, benefits, and even liquidated damages (an additional equal amount) (SEC. 205).

If an employer is found to have willfully violated the anti-retaliation rules, they face civil penalties ranging from $1,100 to $5,000 per violation. While the bill’s goal is clearly to empower workers, companies with tight margins or high turnover will need to rapidly update their HR and scheduling systems to avoid running afoul of the new rules, particularly the complex compensation requirements for missed hours.