So this has been the case for over twenty years now with people “discovering” this well known and well documented practice of keeping employees below full time to keep them from giving benefits. Hell it was exactly like this when my sister was working there as a teenager.
I mean this is kind of what is wrong with America honestly, memories of a gold fish and one of the reasons why no progress ever gets made.
Yup. I worked at Target circa 2010 and it was the same. I was scheduled 38 hours a week, and you would get written up if you were late clocking out.
I remember when I was working at McDondald’s and they never worked me above 32 hours typically. Back then it was 40 as the cutoff. That they’re allowed to scuzz their way around the law through this means we’ll never get equity with our system. They must be punished for such practices.
Tying benefits to employers is idiotic. Even if you want to tie benefits to work requirements, this system fucks the millions of people with multiple part-time jobs.
it’s accomplishing exactly what it’s designed to
Capitalism is all about a few people getting all the capital, if you’re not owning something you’re the worker that they exploit to do so. Billionaires and trillionaires are inevitable in such a system.
what’s screwed up is at 2010 a month it also disqualifies you from Medicaid in states that have low income eligibility. It’s not uncommon that if you aren’t getting benefits to self cap your hours at 20-25 hours a week because any more and you lose federal aid, so its cheaper for them to actually work /less/. All stemming from the companies inability to let their workers work.
Yep, these effects are called welfare traps. It’s why benefits shouldn’t have hard thresholds, but instead taper off gradually as income increases.
Although in the case of health care, it should obviously be universal in the same way that every other developed country implements it.
I mean, the better solution is for everyone to get benefits with no taper. That way there’s never any trap and no one has to worry about covering essentials.
Give everyone… ghasp, socialism!
Slavery. It’s slavery.
medicaid calculates your total gross income, and not adjusted by tax. so if you are earn 700 instead of the 1000 before taxes, they will count that 1000. i know a person that works just under limit , shes afraid of going over, eventhough lunch period cuts 30minutes out of the paycheck, so shes actually earning way less than the max income for medicaid in my state.
2010, is actually way over in most states, if not all for medicaid. the highest is ~1840ish in most states per month. depending on the min wage, it can be only 18-19hrs (with out lunch cutting into the hours).
amazon does this too, set thier max limit for part time workers to 19hrs , when they had shoppers still(2018-2022), and maybe the amazon return stations. i think warehouses might be different(since most of them are full time)
Many places won’t rent to someone that cannot prove monthly income greater than 3x the rent.
This happened to me. I provided a bank statement that proved I had a year of rent in savings…
nO 1 wAnTs 2 wOrK nE mOaR!!!1!11!
Tips help the owner not the employee.
Yeah, tying this to tip culture is directly undermining the point she’s making.
She’s saying it’s society’s problem and then ending by bringing up an individual’s act of tipping. Don’t get me wrong the people keeping the tipped minimum wage what it is should be tried in The Hague for crimes against humanity. But the solution is not to tip more, the solution is to raise the minimum wage, especially the tipped minimum wage. Or even better to have collective bargaining backed up by strong unions for workers in all sectors.
Seems the answer would be to end exemptions like this for companies with gross revenues or profits over certain figures that people smarter than me can figure out.
or nationalize them and make the workers own the corp
Stop tying health benefits to employment. Universal healthcare solves about 90% of this problem.
Even at 32 hours I don’t get any benefits at Walmart.
We have been cowed too much to take back everything that has been stolen from us 😒
Why are there even brackets and thresholds for benefits? It should be a linear scale. 1 hour of work = 1/40th, 29h = 29/40, 30h = 30/40th etc.
Or perhaps the “benefits” should be from government and not employer.
Because fuck the poor!
Also we have a similar, but nowhere near a bad so called benefit cliff in the uk
What we as a society can do is create fertile conditions for unionizing to stop stuff like this.
What we can also do is incentivize worker co-ops.
Hopefully, if too many aren’t too strongly indoctrinated and identified with the team against unions and better worker benefits. Workers in other countries have benefits at all jobs, and they would never go back to the lack of benefits that usa workers accept. Workers here like to feel special that they have a job with “good benefits” that others don’t have so they prefer that. It’s part of the “pioneer, cowboy, self-made” story, but in reality it’s the same selfish and greed that runs deep and they’re proud of it.
This is how you radicalize a generation btw.
This has been going on for 20 years. Still waiting for that radicalized generation
They’re scrolling tiktok and whatever feeds them a constant supply of propaganda, to numb the pain of life, caused by the controlling systems they support, as a team sport, identity their fragile egos are too weak to choose to change. That takes too much courage and integrity.
genz and some alpha love tiktok, its crack to them. now that usa has bought a portion of tiktok, it will be even more addictive.
More than that. But yeah, clearly they’ve figured out a formula to keep people poor and apathetic. So many people don’t vote because they don’t want to get involved in politics. Too bad, cause politics is involved in you - and it’s fucking you over.
Humans are the frog in boiling water made real.
Where I work you can only work temporarily for 2 years before they automatically get a permanent contract. I got a colleague come to me for support yesterday saying he’s been told his contract won’t be renewed beyond 1year+11months and they’re going to advertise to hire another person into the role.
They do this at our Post Office.
The Union says you must get a raise after 12 months of continuous employment.
Well wouldn’t you know it. They only write contracts for 50 weeks employment and 0 PTO. They phrase this contract as if it’s how they “gift” you 2 weeks of vacation. My coworkers didn’t understand it until we got to week 49…
That sounds like it might be a place with somewhat robust worker’s protections, at least on paper. Are there mechanisms to prevent employers gaming the system like that?
I’ve been boycotting WalMart for 25 years, but regrettably this has not put them out of business. Fortunately, it meant that not a single one of my dollars went into their greedy, overstuffed pockets.
I’ve been boycotting WalMart for 25 years, but regrettably this has not put them out of business.
Something for “free market” cargo-cultists to remember, when they try to pretend that boycotts are a substitute for effective government regulation.
Exactly! Individual consumer action is close to meaningless, but regulations are broad and sweeping
luckily walmart is allergic to our high tax counties, so there are non in a 50+mil radius, although the alternative is kinda bad too, just bougie markets popping up, ther prices are usually high.
I boycotted them for 15, but now I can’t afford to shop anywhere else. I have never used Amazon tho.
But if you live in the USA your taxes go to subsidize the wages of their employees through Medicaid and SNAP. We need to do more than boycott but most of us are too tired and broke to do even that much. Good job on doing what you can
Exactly, if the owners paid enough wages then people would make too much to qualify for the public assistance and would be happier and healthier. That’s what controlling systems don’t want, gotta keep the majority in scarcity mode so they keep making bad choices from stressed brain, can’t use prefrontal cortex as much which critical thinking requires.
Edit: higher wages also increases the tax base to help pay for all the things we should have, like all the other rich countries have figured out how to do.
Thankfully, I am Canadian. For life! :D
I’ve never been the same since it clicked in me that welfare payments are used in a huge part to subsidise the businesses that refuse to pay more than minimum wage. So when the news trumpets that “$COMPANY has made record profits this year”, all I hear is a story about how much profit that company has made while also receiving an indirect government bailout.
It does seem like a company shouldn’t be able to take/distribute profit until it’s repaid all the federal and state programs that the employees rely on.
Back in 1960, the minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the cost of the average US home was $11,000.00.
When Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, ‘middle class’ was defined as one job paying for a house, a car, and enough money to send the kids to college. In those days $1 million was considered a vast fortune. After five GOP Presidential terms, middle class was two incomes to support a family of four, and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
my parents had thier first house in the 80s for 120k, so it fits. it drastically went up in the 90s if they bought it.
That is quite a sum in the 80s. My grand parents bought a 2 bdrm condo for about $20k. It took them a while to save up like $10k and they still had a loan. The loan was also at something like 13% rate.
