Holiday-shopping hysteria reminds that it’s time for a retail workers’ bill of rights.

Now that the Thanksgiving holiday is done, the discussion about forcing people to work on holidays should be ramping up. There’s no question that thousands of retail workers were placed in untenable circumstances by retailers and restaurants that opened on Thanksgiving or at absurdly early hours on “Black Friday.” But those circumstances will continue throughout December, a month of holidays and immense pressure by corporate retailers on their employees.

So, instead of simply celebrating the firms that did treat their workers well or condemning the firms that did not, it’s time to turn up the volume on demands for workplace standards – and to recognize them as essential complements to demands for living-wage pay.

San Francisco – where voters in November approved a series of increases that will result in a city minimum wage of $15 an hour – is in the process of establishing needed protections for workers in chain stores and restaurants. Last week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously backed a “Retail Workers Bill of Rights” which combined several pieces of legislation.

Those pieces include giving existing part-timers more work before hiring more part-timers; encouraging fair and predictable schedules by requiring employers to post schedules at least two weeks in advance and mandating extra pay for last-minute schedule changes and discouraging abusive on-call scheduling practices by requiring pay workers who are required to be on call, but whose hours get canceled .

“ALL FAMILIES NEED STRONG WAGES AND SANE SCHEDULES.”

The Bill of Rights also includes a provision for equal treatment of part-time workers, in which employers will be prohibited from discriminating against an employee with respect to starting pay and access to promotions.

“All families need strong wages, stable hours and sane schedules to build a good life,” explained Jobs With Justice San Francisco Executive Director Gordon Mar, whose group played a critical role in promoting the bill of rights. “But too many of our neighbors who serve our food, stock our shelves and sweep our floors have jobs that grant too few hours on too short notice and require them to be at the beck and call of their employers.”

The San Francisco model for “Jobs With Just Hours” needs to go national. There has already been progress, where Congressman George Miller, D-California, and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, have introduced the “Schedules That Work Act” (HR 5159). A parallel measure has been introduced in the Senate by Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin.

Before Thanksgiving, Congressman Steve Israel, D-New York, asked Secretary of Labor Tom Perez to “encourage companies to ask for volunteers to work on Thanksgiving Day and provide overtime or holiday pay for those who work.”

That encouragement should be extended, especially in the coming weeks – a time when retail workers will be under immense pressure.

JOHN NICHOLS is Washington correspondent for The Nation.