Protecting companies from hourly employees
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@Danp said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller You may want to look into the difference between a layoff and a furlough.
Right, furlough is a type of lay off that has an agreed upon return time, didn't I describe that earlier? I've shown without doubt, I believe, both in employment and in language, that furloughs are a form of lay off and that being sent home at the end of a shift when the next shift is known is a form of furlough and without a known next shift is not, but both are lay offs. What am I missing?
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@Danp said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller Clearly not.
Then what makes one one thing and one another, when both are the same in every conceivable way except an arbitrary delineation of time. I asked you this one earlier - if you use time to differentiate employed from unemployed, what is that time? How many hours before things switch by your rules? In my world, it's a general case and the same rules apply everywhere. You keep stating that there are special cases, but you've not provided what the rules are that define your cases. Provide those and we can discuss. Until you do, I can't even tell when you think people are employed and when you think that they are not. Literally, I'm not trying to push the point, I truly can't tell when you would describe people as one or the other.
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@scottalanmiller said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
Yes, that's a handy way of speaking about it and people do that all the time. But I believe that it is inaccurate. It's a fuzzy term that we use to describe someone with regular work, but I believe that it is inaccurate. What do you call someone who is on furlough, not being paid, for months at a time? Are they gainfully employed?
IMO, your logic would only apply to a day laborer.
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@Danp said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
Yes, that's a handy way of speaking about it and people do that all the time. But I believe that it is inaccurate. It's a fuzzy term that we use to describe someone with regular work, but I believe that it is inaccurate. What do you call someone who is on furlough, not being paid, for months at a time? Are they gainfully employed?
IMO, your logic would only apply to a day laborer.
Why only day laborers? And what makes someone a day laborer compared to a normal hourly employee?
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@scottalanmiller A furlough isn't a layoff. The employee continues to work, just at a reduced rate (number of hours, pay rate, etc).
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From my understanding of day laborer, you work for the day and there is no promise of work tomorrow. That applies to a huge number of hourly people. You leave your shift at the hotel (this applies to where I used to work) or restaurant (also applies) and there is no promise of another shift, at least not much of the time. Sometimes they know, sometimes they don't.
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@Danp said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller A furlough isn't a layoff. The employee continues to work, just at a reduced rate (number of hours, pay rate, etc).
No, they don't. I've been furloughed before and it can be months without work. They "continue to work" when they return to work. Some furloughs are reductions in hours, but the term furlough does not imply that. Furlough means "break" basically. I know thousands of hourly workers that have done furloughs and not one had reduced hours unless you call weeks or months without work "reduced hours", which many people do.
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@scottalanmiller you are being obtuse here. Normal hourly employees are scheduled for a week or more in advance. There is no not knowing.
If a place treats you like that, legal or not, they would quickly lose employees.
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What made it a furlough was that there was a definite end date to the furlough. The "reduction of hours" to zero stopped on a known date, agreed upon before the furlough began. Exactly the same as leaving a shift on Friday night and coming back on Monday morning. Just it was ten Mondays later instead of one, nothing else different.
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@JaredBusch said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller you are being obtuse here. Normal hourly employees are scheduled for a week or more in advance. There is no not knowing.
Almost no fast food, hotels or similar jobs reliably do that. It's extremely common for jobs to have no promise of your next shift. We are not all so affluent to forget what blue collar work is like. I have a friend who literally went through this this week. She works inside a Walmart, her schedule goes up "same day". How many people do you know have said that they have to "call in" for their hours. That term exists specifically for people who went home without having been told yet when they will work again.
Nearly everyone making under $35K that I know of faces this.
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@scottalanmiller said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@Danp said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller You can tell an employee to go home for the day, evening, whatever. That's not the same as terminating their employment.
Are you sure? Because it acts exactly the same in every way. They have no rights any different from anyone else that is terminated. All legalities behave identically when you send someone home, furlough them or lay them off.
Oh that's not true. for example, during that 16 hour furlough as you put it their health benefits, assuming they have them are still active. If you lay someone off, they health bene's stop.
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@JaredBusch said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
If a place treats you like that, legal or not, they would quickly lose employees.
That's a good theory, but places treating people like that rarely worry about that. High turnover jobs and jobs that have employees with few other prospects. And it is so common, where would people go? People working in nearly any hospitality field face this, and that's a lot of people.
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@scottalanmiller said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
From my understanding of day laborer, you work for the day and there is no promise of work tomorrow.
That's my take on it. From my POV, it's like temp labor where there isn't a long term employment relationship.
That applies to a huge number of hourly people. You leave your shift at the hotel (this applies to where I used to work) or restaurant (also applies) and there is no promise of another shift, at least not much of the time. Sometimes they know, sometimes they don't.
I have not worked in these areas, I would defer to your experience. I have worked with truck drivers, warehouse workers, clerical workers, etc.
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@Dashrender said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@Danp said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller You can tell an employee to go home for the day, evening, whatever. That's not the same as terminating their employment.
Are you sure? Because it acts exactly the same in every way. They have no rights any different from anyone else that is terminated. All legalities behave identically when you send someone home, furlough them or lay them off.
Oh that's not true. for example, during that 16 hour furlough as you put it their health benefits, assuming they have them are still active. If you lay someone off, they health bene's stop.
That's totally incorrect. Health benefits are monthly. If you furlough someone for an hour or 30 days, doesn't matter. One day employed in a month gives you health benefits.
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@Danp said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
From my understanding of day laborer, you work for the day and there is no promise of work tomorrow.
That's my take on it. From my POV, it's like temp labor where there isn't a long term employment relationship.
I think that that is a soft definition - not a legal one. Just how work is perceived. If you do "day labour" but get work for two days, or a week, does it change?
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@Danp said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
That applies to a huge number of hourly people. You leave your shift at the hotel (this applies to where I used to work) or restaurant (also applies) and there is no promise of another shift, at least not much of the time. Sometimes they know, sometimes they don't.
I have not worked in these areas, I would defer to your experience. I have worked with truck drivers, warehouse workers, clerical workers, etc.
Clerical tend to work set office hours, rather than shifts. Warehouse tend to be union. Truck drivers are very special cases, and I have no idea how they work but I would imagine often have to wait to hear if there are runs available. The people that I see get this the most are those working places where there are many shifts, often 24x7 or 18x7 hours, loads of turnover, fluctuating work loads, etc.
An office, like a doctor's office that is open exaclty one shift tends to be predictable, you do 8-4 every day unless otherwise stated. But loads and loads of entry level work is "get your schedule before you leave for the day" and if you aren't on in the next day or two, it's very easy to have no idea when you are supposed to return and if you aren't one of the key staffers, it might be a week or two before you do, or the next day, you never know.
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@scottalanmiller Like I said, that was from my perspective. I'm sure there's a real definition for "day laborer", which is sure to be very different from mine.
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@Danp said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller Like I said, that was from my perspective. I'm sure there's a real definition for "day laborer", which is sure to be very different from mine.
The one I found was for the UK where it is a class of worker.
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@scottalanmiller said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@JaredBusch said in Protecting companies from hourly employees:
@scottalanmiller you are being obtuse here. Normal hourly employees are scheduled for a week or more in advance. There is no not knowing.
Almost no fast food, hotels or similar jobs reliably do that. It's extremely common for jobs to have no promise of your next shift. We are not all so affluent to forget what blue collar work is like. I have a friend who literally went through this this week. She works inside a Walmart, her schedule goes up "same day". How many people do you know have said that they have to "call in" for their hours. That term exists specifically for people who went home without having been told yet when they will work again.
Nearly everyone making under $35K that I know of faces this.
Yeah I hear what you're saying - but I haven't seen scheduling like that since I left minimum wage type jobs - for me it was working at Walgreens. Even as a telemarketer I had a set weekly schedule and I was making $20K/yr.
Most employees at my office make under $35K, but they have pretty set schedules, with a bit of flexibility when covering people's vacations.
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My guess is that day laborer in the US is just something we say, a way to describe how someone tends to work. Under my way of describing working hours and contracts, it would just "work", no special case needed to allow for it.
