NPR:
Let’s say employers have valid reasons for hiring part-time rather than full-time employees.
Fine. But that means people will need two jobs to make ends meet which is impossible if one job (maybe both) is varying their hours week to week.
I post this because I see a lot of posts here from folk who have a stereotype of poor people that they’d rather be on the dole than work. There are a lot of obstacles that make life extra difficult for the working poor, fluctutating schedules being just one.
One big reason is the artificiality of the 30 hour worker = full time for Obamacare purposes. I’m reading about more and more employers capping their hours for employees at 28 hours per week so as not to have to deal with it.
*(At which point, predictably, somebody will say "greedy b&&ta&
s" – my answer to that is that a franchise owner has a hard enough time to close the books without either adding the HUGE expense of health insurance or paying an extra excise tax on each employee)
Back when I’ve had to schedule part time people at a pizzaria (it’s been many, many years), it was simply a matter of finding the right number of people to work the right shifts on the right days. “Are you available” was the only question. I had a calendar up where employees put their “unavailable” days/shifts when doing up the schedule for the next two weeks. I didn’t worry about the number of hours per employee…most would be happy to get as many hours as they could…provided it didn’t conflict with other plans.
Nowadays, the job would be incredibly more difficult, as I’d have to calculate hours and make sure nobody went over 30. Because that would be a VERY bad thing.
Having said the above, as far as the “
rather be on the dole than work” comment, it’s a matter of simple mathematics.
Look, I was laid off from my last job (company restructuring). While I was fortunate that I found another job almost immediately and so didn’t actually have to take any unemployment checks, I found out a whole bunch first hand about how the system worked. For example, I found that my unemployment check would be $472 per week (that’s $11.82 an hour for 40 hours). If I went and got full time employment at Best Buy, Walmart, or some food chain to help make ends meet, I would have a very hard time finding employment that would pay me $11.82 an hour – frankly, most would start me at around $9 an hour in this area. The way unemployment works here in Maryland, if I get a job that pays anything…I have to report it. Once I got a job, any job, my unemployment check stops.
I know somebody else that was laid off at the same time as me (and whose network wasn’t quite as good as mine) who stayed on unemployment for almost 6 months for that very reason…it took that long for him to find the “right” job and he would have been severely penalized had he taken something on an interim basis.
And so it’s math, not laziness, but math. It makes no economic sense for one who could get $11.82 an hour to look for other employment to then turn around and get a job that pays $8 - $9 an hour.
Does the actual “dole” work the same way unemployment does? If somebody can claim disability for an obscure reason but would lose it if he/she got a job that paid less than what the person received for disability, why would the person even consider getting a job…which would cause the disability check to stop.
I can’t speak for others, but when you read me criticize the “dole” – I’m not criticizing the person on the dole, I’m criticizing a system that penalizes somebody for showing the initiative to work.
