DKos Post: You're hired! But you don't get any hours [View all]

[RandySF]

My young adult daughter applied for a couple of part-time jobs recently--one with a national bookstore chain, the other with a department store photo studio. In both cases she was told, if hired, she would be guaranteed 0-15 hours per week, depending on how busy things were and how well she worked out. Zero hours? Who guarantees zero hours? Who hires for zero hours? What sort of hire is that?

She told me this past spring she overheard a woman in one of her community college classes talking about getting only one hour of work that week from one job, and two from another. This woman has two kids and is making the effort to get an education. A couple of her friends who don't have families have complained of the same situation--one or two hours a week from a job.

My daughter has done the math of what it looks like to support yourself on minimum wage and concluded it's doable if you work full-time and are happy just barely getting by and don't have any emergency expenditures and don't own a car. So, she asks me, how in the hell do you support yourself and a family--especially if you don't have even one full-time job, but two that add up to less? How do you get yourself to work? And what happens if both jobs suddenly offer you more work and there's a scheduling conflict, but no guarantee of continuing work from either employer?

I don't think I'm romanticizing the past when I recall my first part-time job at a fast-food restaurant that required I work at least 15 hours a week and take more hours if needed. I was called in frequently to help cover rush times. Other minimum wage jobs I held when I was in high school and college required a certain number of shifts. Most of my shifts, managers aside, were staffed by kids in my age range--16-20 years-old, and few or none of my fellow workers had families (afternoon and evening hours). I never had a week of one or two hours of work and frequently negotiated with co-workers to cover hours for each other when we couldn't work.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/01/1326289/-You-re-hired-But-you-don-t-get-any-hours