My work hours have been slashed so I’m working 2-3 hour shifts 5 days a week for 10 hours a week. I heard my manager say that they don’t fire anyone, to avoid paying any unemployment compensation, but instead slash their hours. Do I have any legal recourse or do I just have to work 2-3 hour shifts until I find another job? I get paid an hourly wage.
Not even close to being a lawyer so take with as many grains of salt as you like.
More than likely, you’re just screwed.
Where (roughly) are you located? Do you have an educated guess as to why your hours have been slashed? Have you spoken to you manager about the reduction? What reason did he offer and what’s your BS estimation of what he told you?
In cases like this, documentation is your best friend. Research, research, research! Who else is getting short shifts and what do they have in common? You’ll have a much better chance if you can prove a pattern of abuse.
So sorry to hear that your hours have been cut so severely. You may want to research labor laws in you state to learn if you have any legal recourse.
Are you currently receiving benefits? If so, one tack you may take with your employer is to challenge him to do a cost comparison between paying unemployment insurance and maintaining unnecessary headcount. Keeping employees on your books is very expensive. Even with unemployment insurance costs, I would be stunned if it wasn’t more costly to maintain four employees working 10 hours per week than one full-timer. Most corporations won’t offer part time positions under 20 hours per week.
I’m in the United States. My hours have been slowly decreasing from fulltime as the new manager has taken hold of operations. I had a surpised look on my face the first night that I was instructed to work off the clock at the end of my shift, because I’ve never been asked to do that before elsewhere. When I asked an assistant manager if they’d be a personal reference, they gladly agreed, but within a week or so, a couple of new employees were hired and my hours were slashed. Normally, new hires are the first to be sent home when the work load thins out, but the manager sends me home first every day. I’m sure the new hires were initially puzzled, and now amused, when they see me being sent home after working just two hours. The new hires don’t work off the clock because they work short shifts, anywhere from 3 to 7 hours, and they also don’t do any of the grunt work.
It’s as though I was preemptively replaced in anticipation of my leaving, but that’s odd because I’ve seen many other employees talk openly of getting other jobs and their hours aren’t slashed when they give notice, and they even return to work after “quitting”, leaving for another job or going on an extended vacation. Also, a job search where I live can take years since it’s a bad economy and I didn’t say anything about doing an intensive job search, so there’s no rational reason for them to think I’d be leaving soon.
Next time they ask that say, “No, that’s illegal. I’ll work or I’ll clock out, but not both.” They may fire you, but you’d have a case for the labor board.
Make sure to document personally all the hours you’ve worked off the clock. You can claim back wages and get them in trouble with the labor board if they fire you.
I never had the opportunity again to complain. They simply slashed my hours down to trainee hours so I never work to closing time. Problem solved for them.
“work off the clock” as in clocking out and no longer getting paid for your time but still expected to work? That is so insanely illegal. The manager is either begging for a lawsuit or too stupid for the position. Either way, don’t stand for it. Contact your local dept of labor or take it directly to the area supervisor or owner (your manager’s boss, whoever that may be).
I believe many states offer partial unemployment benefits for workers that lose hours. Have you looked into that?
Moving from MPSIMS to IMHO.
Have you talked to your manager about this? Maybe they know more about the issue then a thousand random internet strangers?
Sounds like a crappy manager and company, assuming they know what he/she’s doing. Best option sounds like to find another employer.
Agreed, but finding jobs here takes time. In the meanwhile, my concern is whether or not I have any legal teeth to request a more normal work schedule. The two hour shifts don’t really pay the bills.
Probably not. I don’t know what state you’re in, but it’s likely an “at will” state meaning your employers can end your employment at any time, and you can as well. I assume this would also apply towards a reduction in hours.
As someone upthread said, you might be able to get some assistance due to the lower hours but I have to imagine the hoops to jump through to make that happen are pretty difficult and likely require you to work those shortened hours for a long time before the assistance would be made available to you.
Since you are the only one that is having their hours cut back, and not the other new hires, the manager could be documenting a trail of discipline for whatever reasons to put in your employee file. He/she can then fire you for cause, and then avoid you being able to claim unemployment insurance, and their experience rate increasing, and their resulting unemployment insurance premiums from increasing.
Yep. Our managers used to do this to us when I worked at a Wendy’s restaurant in high school. “Closing” (the cleanup after the store closed at 10 or 11 PM) was supposed to take an hour but sometimes took longer, and the managers would make us clock out after an hour. Being high school students, we didn’t know enough to argue.
Also: if your hours are cut, you may have the ability to file for partial unemployment. Can you collect unemployment benefits if your job was reduced to part time? - Answers
It sure sounds to me like they’re trying to encourage you to quit (again, to save on unemployment costs). Stick it to 'em: hold out until you either find another job, or they break down and let you go, but as others have said, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT.
There are tradeoffs either way, unemployment-wise. If you let a single person go, your unemployment rates can jump a fair bit. My own experience (as a household employer with a single employee) was that when we let our nanny go, if we’d hired a replacement our costs would have gone from 20-40 dollars a year, to 400 or thereabouts. While a larger organization would likely have a higher rate anyway (because there is always someone getting out for one reason, and a certain amount of unemployment claims are to be expected), that illustrates that the impact can be pretty significant.
On the other hand, you only pay unemployment tax on the first few thousand of income per employee. In my state it was 8,000 of income. So if the nanny earned 3 times that, I paid the same over the year as if she earned 16,000 or 40,000. BUT, if I had 2 part-time nannies each earning 8,000 or more a year, I’d have paid on the first 8,000 of income for each. So, same net salary, double the unemployment.
Or they might be trying to force you to quit, by deliberately not giving you enough hours to make the job worth having. Either way, they’re trying to screw you. And from the sound of it, it’s you personally they’re gunning for.