Zero Hour Contracts - the Latest Corporate Tactic

This is the topic of this thread. Zero Hour contracts.

 

I wasn't' judging you. Just illustrating a point.

NO ONE that understand a McDonalds believes that they don't have the revenue or the cash flow to sustain payroll during slow times. They CHOOSE not to. That's why a lot of times if you go into a McD at 3 in the afternoon there will be two people working in the store , service will be slow and the dining area will be messy. Then when the people who work the dinner rush show up for work they have to haul ass get the place cleaned up , then work the dinner rush then half of them are sent home and the cycle repeats LOL

 

It's called cash reserves. If you are am employer, you are required to have the cash to pay them.

You cannot tell me that McDonalds cannot predict that weekends are going to be more busy than weekdays and that evenings more than day time. They log every transaction adn get the statistics given to them!

It's wholescale abuse of people who are on the bottom rung, it encarcerates them to that bottom rung as no matter how much they try, they cannot manage their income, if they do not know what it will be.

 

In Arkansas anyway, you are entitled to 4 hours of pay if you clock in even for 1 minute. But I'm sure businesses would do the right thing in these situations if we just got rid of all laws.

 

The sad thing is that there are now middle aged adults with families doing that sort of thing for their primary income right now.

I met quite a few of them when I worked last Christmas for extra money. These people aren't bums.

But they are the 47% that Mitt Romney ridiculed on camera.

 

One thing I've always hated about fast food restaurant and such is that they hire 60 people to fill 40 positions. Working each of them 20 hours a week. I would have no problem with having fewer employees working more hours. Personally I think employers should have to work people a minimum of a 6 hour shift per day that they come into work. Yes, that would force employers to reconfigure their labor hours and yes it would no doubt mean a few less employees per store, but I think the trade off would be worth it.

Pay someone $7.25 an hour then work them 20 hours a week then (*)(*)(*)(*)(*) that they are on welfare LOL

 

It's simply workers paying for managerial incompetence. Managers are supposed to manage their requirements, not make it up as they go along, day by day and week by week. If some one works 20 hours a aweek, there's a good chance they'll need a second job, which means they'll need to know the days and hours for both jobs. It's not much to ask that the manager of a shop can know this upfront and employ people on this basis.

 

Actually it has nothing to do with bad management and everything to do with not caring.

ALL the manager cares about is the bottom line for the restaraunt, and it is cheaper for McD if they employe 3 people and split them up over 16 hours then it would be hire 2 people and work them 8 hours each because when hiring 3 people there are times when only 1 of the 3 need be there, but if you had 2 employees there would be slow times that they were both there because of scheduling.

Believe me, McD has it down to a science, they know EXACTLY what they are doing, to the penny. If hiring less people but working them more hours each was better for the bottom line that is EXACTLY what they would do.

Once again , sometimes the government IS the solution. I believe they should step in on this issue.

 

A cash business (restaurants) is easier to manage than one like mine which extends terms and has receivables issues. But, it does not diminish the challenge they face of having to purchase inventory and account for waste.

I can only speak of my business where R+D is expensive, I must order inventory and pre-pay for it and banks no longer finance that (Dodd/Frank)

I had to go overseas to obtain LOC's at higher rates but that's life. So, you need to walk a mile in the shoes of specific businesses before making a judgment

 

Okay, so let's relate it to your business.

You have slow times... I'm assuming you have employees? Do they receive a paycheck when it's slow? I assume that they do, just like mine do. Fast food workers do not, they get sent home, okay even that I'm okay with myself. What I'm not okay with is paying them a dirt wage, not giving them any meaningful hours to begin with and then on top of that sending them home when it gets slow during their scheduled hours. I know for a fact that a lot of McDonalds employees are scheduled for 30 hours a week and end up working < 25 hours a week, and yes as someone pointed out earlier in the thread in a lot of cases those people VOLUNTEER to go home (why is beyond me) but in many cases they do not, and certainly their are times when they are sent home against their wishes.

Then we add insult to injury by kicking these people while they are down.

Let me ask you a quick question. If your business needed some remodeling which forced you to shut down for 2 weeks, would you send all your employees home without pay for those 2 weeks?

Personally I would not.

 

Yea, I know they're not bums. For many of them it's a pass through job while they're in school or whatever. For some it's second income. But those aren't the folks Romney was referring to....in context he was referring mainly to a group of folks who prefer hands outs over work and look to government as their keeper....a group who vote typically straight democrat anyway. And, considering his record of charitable contributions, I think pinning him with any meaning beyond that isn't really honest.

 

When I washed dishes in highschool, during one summer, I didn't know how long I was working from one week to the next. I had a pretty good idea if I was working the morning or afternoon shift, but that was about it. Sunday morning, the chart went up for the week. Take it or leave it.

 

I deal in long sales cycles and then repeat business from customers. So, we might not ship for 2-3 weeks, perhaps longer, and then get a bunch of orders. Software development also takes time and has up-front costs. I have full time employees and even when cash gets tight, they get paid, I do not. When receivables get out of control, I factor where I can but international business is tough/impossible to factor depending on the country. So you see, you need to understand a business before questioning how it is managed.

 

so you answer is that no you do not cut your employees wages when things get slow. Good for you.

Sadly, there are a lot of greedy people who do . And you know that would be okay if their employees made more in the good times, but they don't.

SOME employers want the best of both, They want to make the most for themselves when its busy with no extra rewards to the employees then (*)(*)(*)(*) on the employees when its slow.

 

I'm sorry Sec, but it doesn't matter. People should not be treated like this. Especially those on min wage, with few hours of work.

I get paid per hour worked, with a min 40 guaranteed, I like the arrangement and so do the companies which use my services. But I work in the tech sector and am no where near min wage. With min wage workers, it's abuse, pure and simple.

 

So you think that you have covered the issue of why 40.28% of wage earners make less than $20,000. I don't think so. Second jobs have nothing to do with it. 40.28% are not all passing through jobs.

 

I do not understand why the right talk about their own situations but then say that it is a good thing. You get screwed and just say "That's life".

It would never cross the minds of righties that these situations are unjust when it happened to them and is happening to more people.

 

That's the bottom line here. Some are justifying taking advantage of others simply because they can. All this "let them better themselves" is just pure horse crap.

We're talking about 40K employees just at McDonalds alone who are making <$9 an hour. Common sense should surely tell us that maybe just a few of them are solid productive people who through no fault of their own simply are not making "what they are worth"

I mean just the law of averages tells me that. "well then they can move up to management" LOL how many managers does McD need?

I'm a firm believer in hard work, I have worked hard my entire adult life. But I'm also a firm believer that it takes MORE than hard work. I know some hard working honest mother (*)(*)(*)(*)ers who are dirt poor.

Oh sure in lollipop land hard work alone might bring opportunity, unfortunately, we live in the real world.

 

But that WAS life. I was a teen. Seriously, what kind of schedule could I have that couldn't be changed on the fly? What responsibilities did I have that wasn't about studying or some chores? Unjust? What I did was mindless, but I did it well, I showed up and the boss shoved extra cash into my pocket each month because of it. 10 other kids wouldn't show up or wouldn't care if a dish was dirty when it went back on the shelf. I took pride in it, because thats how I was raised. It was crap work, but I'm glad I did it.

Now in the corporate world, we're studying how to adapt our work places to the new generation of Millennials, because we have no choice. Frankly, they should be adapting to us, but the sad truth is, even when asked, many will just sit on their a$$ at home, rather then find a job that isn't exactly what they expect. Sadly we need them=) Its exciting and mind boggling all at the same time, because I'm GenX, so they don't really know anything I don't. I'm ahead of their curve. They can't teach me ^$&*#*(#. But their apparent "needs" and "wants" and expectation make my LOL, because its so fracking pathetic and explains exactly why many of them can't find jobs.

 

I guess that some people think businesses screwing you is good for workers.

 

Oh yeah...businesses "always" do the right thing...(for them). Unfortunately, that doesn't include the employee.

 

If you think abuses do not occur with zero contracts, then you are wrong.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/07/sports-direct-zero-hour-contracts

 

You do understand that the group you just described is merely a small minority of low income workers right?

Frankly, I couldn't care about the plight of the pot headed loser who is happy working 20 hours a week at McD and volunteers to go home early at every opportunity so he can jump on the XBox and kill some zombies.

(*)(*)(*)(*), I'd cut them off welfare and let them die.

But they are only a portion of the employees we're talking about

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I was being sarcastic.

 

But you will eventually get the bulk of the loin's share so, not paying yourself gets made up for rather handsomely in the long run. Gimme a break. Employers are all about employees being very "open ended" as far as their responsibilities to the employer, and EXTREMELY closed ended when it comes to pay, and that pay is largely very nominal.

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It's very profitable for the big boys and yeah, they like it.

 

As was I Sir.