Workers are taking their frustrations public across the country, as last week saw thousands of fast-food employees protesting in the streets, blocking roads and voicing their unified demand for a living wage. Dozens were arrested in high-profile actions from Detroit to Oakland to New York, pushing for an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour. And in San Francisco, where rent prices are exploding, anger among low-wage earners was on full display.

“It’s a struggle every week,” Raegan, a 27-year-old single mother of two, told Occupy.com. She said increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour could enable her to stop working 60-hour weeks, which she cobbles together with multiple jobs just to provide the basics for her children.

“I don’t know if I am going to get the 30 hours at each job because that is just the nature of the work I do as a cook," she said. "It is frustrating because at the end of the day, I have little ability to demand anything and my hours are always changing.”

Now, the solution for Raegan and many others like her appears to be gaining form through a new Bay Area legislative movement that could be a litmus test for other municipalities across the country: the Retail Workers Bill of Rights.

The first section of the Bill of Rights was introduced by San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar, who believes the need to give existing part-time employees the opportunity to work more hours, with greater predictability from one week to the next, is vital for the retail sector worker.

A second portion of the bill will be put forward by fellow Supervisor David Chiu later this month. The bills would only affect “formula retail” companies that have 11 or more outlets nationally. According to Jobs with Justice San Francisco, the labor organization that helped draft the bills, there are 1,250 businesses and around 100,000 employees who fall into this category.

“It is the right thing to do, because we, as workers, are struggling to makes things work in our lives. One week we work 40 hours, and the next, 20,” said Mark Leland, a 32-year-old employee at a global clothing chain based in the city. “It just isn’t right.”

The case is especially true for large companies where electronic scheduling has enabled owners and managers to create shorter shifts for more individuals. According to one manager at another top clothing chain in San Francisco, “This is what it takes to stay profitable. If workers don’t like this, then they can go get another job somewhere else.”

But for employees like Leland and thousands of others now working two, sometimes three part-time jobs to keep their hours and earnings at a livable level, the new bills could help end this practice. The Workers Bill of Rights would require large companies like Target, Lowe’s, McDonald’s and Starbucks to offer more hours for current employees before being allowed to hire additional workers.

The hope for many activists and labor advocates is that the initial stage of the bill's debate will help shed greater public understanding about working conditions – not only for retail employers, but in all sectors, where the majority of “full-time” staff remains well below the 40-hour-a-week threshold defined as full-time work by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Supervisor John Avalos, a supporter of the bills, compared the current plight of retail employees trapped in the “race-to-the-bottom Walmart model” to that of workers 100 years ago, before the rise of unions and workplace protection laws.

Avalos said workers today are once again encountering daily abuses by large companies that aim to curtail hours and cut costs to further their profits.

But according to the clothing chain manager, who preferred to remain unnamed, the new bills amount to “an attack on business and ultimately on a person’s ability to get a job.”

"These jobs are not careers and they should not be seen as such," he said. "This is just a part-time job that people will then move on from.”

That position is par for the course these days among companies and business lobbying groups that continue to peddle fears that an increase in workers' rights – from higher wages to more employment hours – will result in loss of jobs, and that it's better to have a low-paying job with shorter hours than to not have one at all.

Leland countered that perhaps “he’s right, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight for better rights, especially in San Francisco where we supposedly care about people."

The Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on the bills this fall and needs at least six out of 11 votes to pass with the support of Mayor Ed Lee – or eight votes to override a veto. While Supervisors Mar and Chiu are optimistic they can garner the support needed to pass the bills, going up against large corporations with millions of dollars to spend on lawyers will still be an uphill task.

But it's one that workers, activists – and now lawmakers in one of America's most prosperous cities – see as a fight they must, and will, pursue.

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