7 ms·

> guaranteed 20 hours per week, need to be available for 40 hours per week This I think is part of the huge problem with modern "low level"/minimum wage jobs.

• verisimilitude 4y ago
  God, this is such a good point. This gap between scheduled hours (~20) versus expected dictation of 'available' hours (~40) is one of the things powering the obnoxious "side hustle" idea...
  • nerdponx 4y ago
    You should be paid for those extra 20 on-call hours.
• brianbreslin 4y ago
  Wait till you dig into companies forcing non-competes on non-full time staff like this. Jimmy Johns didn't let their minimum wage sandwich cooks work at other fast food places. So not only are you not getting full time hours, you aren't getting health coverage, and have to find a job outside of QSR (quick serve restaurants) to make ends meet.
  • vanattab 4y ago
    There is no way this is enforced though.
    • rtkwe 4y ago
      It's a convenient cause to point to if they're being annoying about scheduling though and the threat of even a nonenforcable contract clause will stop most people, who can afford to fight it just to go back to a job where they'll make up another reason to fire you later anyways, assuming you're in a reasonable state that even forces them to do that.
      • vanattab 4y ago
        I am not justifying Non-Competes for food service jobs, I am merely pointing out to anyone that might be in that position not to fear taking another job.
        • alsetmusic 4y ago
          Easier said than done and few of the affected people are likely to be members of this community (HN). Try telling that to a person getting threatened with losing their job.
    • MattGaiser 4y ago
      I would be curious if it were even enforceable under labour law.
      • lordnacho 4y ago
        The issue with such problematic clauses is that even though they might not be enforceable, some fraction of people who sign them will stick to them, to their own detriment. What's needed is some kind of harsh punishment for including unenforceable contract clauses, coupled with awareness from the side of the employee.
        • mehlmao 4y ago
          The last few noncompetes I've been presented with have clauses saying that if any part of the noncompete is found to be illegal, the rest still stands. I wholeheartedly believe that if a noncompete contains elements that are illegal at the time of signing, the entire document should be void and the entity presenting it should owe damages.
          • lozenge 4y ago
            That's standard wording in any contract, and in most cases it holds. However, the issue is who is going to present the case for the low wage worker who's lost say $200 in illegal deductions. There is no part of society that will reliably perform that role. By design of course.
          • lordnacho 4y ago
            What happens if you are getting paid by a company for say a year and then the contract is discovered to be void?
    • kevincox 4y ago
      "Luckily" the minimum wage part-time employees can't afford a lawyer to find out if it is unenforceable. I think there needs to be some sort of law against known unenforceable contract provisions. They seem to be pretty commonly used against individuals where they are unlikely to know what is and isn't enforceable.
    • brianbreslin 4y ago
      It seems like they dropped them after being sued by the state. So they must have been enforcing them enough to catch the attention of the Illinois AG. https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/jimmy-johns-drops-non-compete-clauses-following-settlement.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/jimmy-johns-drops-non-compet...
• elliekelly 4y ago
  When I worked in consulting we had a large retail client who had a lot of turn-over and was looking for ways to "stabilize" hiring. (Short of paying more money, of course!) When we looked into it their system was regularly over-scheduling shifts "just in case" there was a rush and then having store managers "cut" shifts if there wasn't a rush. There aren't a lot of surprise "rush" shifts in shopping malls outside of the holiday season so sometimes employees would come in, work an hour of a scheduled eight hour shift, and then get cut. The cuts tended to happen by "seniority" (so newest hires, paid the least) and a decent number of these employees who were frequently cut were traveling at least an hour by public transportation. Some days employees lost money by going to work. We were thrilled by what we'd found! It would be a quick and easy fix for the client: they had solid and reliable sales forecasts for each location so estimating the number of employees they'd need on a given day wasn't going to be difficult. In fact, they were more or less already doing it. It would hardly cost them anything to implement aside from a few tweaks to the corporate scheduling tool and a bit of training for the store managers. So when management immediately shot down our proposed solution it came as a bit of shock. The erratic scheduling and the "cut" shifts were a feature, not a bug, we were told. It kept employees from getting a second job that they might dare prioritize over their current job.
  • Hamuko 4y ago
    >large retail client who had a lot of turn-over and was looking for ways to "stabilize" hiring >It kept employees from getting a second job that they might dare prioritize over their current job. I mean, clearly it fucking didn't.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • cafard 4y ago
    Wow.
    • jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
      This is the reality now for many working class people in the US, and has been for some time. They end up working two part time jobs with constant scheduling conflicts, and god help you if you have childcare needs as well. It's very consciously and deliberately designed to minimize both employee costs and their bargaining power. I mean we have freaking companies demanding non compete agreements to work in fast food. But god forbid you raise the point that perhaps we need a political shift that removes some power from corporations and restores it to labor, you get painted as socialized nazi commie scum or whatever. It's so insane and frustrating just how good a lock these businesses have on the situation (Don't even get me started on Walmart et all).
• turns0ut 4y ago
  This is the problem with a JIT economy in general. They want to shave a lot of pennies for themselves by playing musical chairs with our agency.
• lozenge 4y ago
  It's especially egregious for an airport who know just how many flights take off and land and how many passengers they'll have weeks in advance.