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Comment by aries1980 | Hacker News Reader

aries1980

I'm not familiar with US employment laws, but the amount of hours is not in your contract? The number of hours and the nature of the schedule is not something the employer is allowed to change in Europe. Zero-hour contracts are explicitly illegal, even for the self-employed.

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> I'm not familiar with US employment laws, but the amount of hours is not in your contract?

Hah, good one, but not if you're marginalized. The majority of the states in the US are "right-to-work," which means you can be fired at any time for almost any reason. For the other states, there are varying levels of protection. I can't really speak to what is stipulated in their contracts, but I can tell you the following: if you're working two+ jobs, commuting 2hrs + because you can't afford to live in the city, and have to cook and clean your apartment on top of that, you don't have time to inform the Department of Labor (that's likely not even the right place to call--better spend some more time finding out what is) that you're being exploited.

> Zero-hour contracts are explicitly illegal, even for the self-employed.

By referring to getting scheduled at all, I was indicating you would likely just be outright fired the next time you dropped a glass, were 1 minute late, or any other minor, human-prone error happened.

Generally, hourly workers (who aren't skilled laborers or part of a union) don't have contracts with fixed hours. They are scheduled weekly however management sees fit.

Further complicating the issue, at 30 hours, many employees become eligible for benefits, so there's a disincentive to increasing an employee past 29 hours/week.

Then, in the restaurant industry, there is a separate, lower minimum wage which assumes the employee makes up the difference in tips. If they don't make up the difference, they can request the employer cover the gap, but the employer will just cut their hours or fire them for being a poor employee.

"Zero-hour contracts are explicitly illegal, even for the self-employed."

Not sure what "Europe" you're talking about, but in my part of Europe, they aren't...

You are right. The following countries [1] (2016):

Austria Belgium Czech Rep Estonia France Lithuania Luxemburg

Since 2016, it has been banned in: Hungary Ireland

Zero-hour employment contracts are heavily regulated in: Germany Italy Netherlands Slovakia

So yeah, it is not banned everywhere (or allowed in certain professions only), but in 70% of the EU.

[1]: https://fullfact.org/law/zero-hours-contracts-uk-europe

Not sure where you are in Europe, but in Switzerland this is perfectly legal. I was employed on a Zero-hour contract as a bartender for much of my time in higher education.

See my answer bit up. I owned a business in Hungary.

"Zero-hours contracts are NOT permitted in: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Spain. There is an uncertainty as to their validity in Sweden. Generally they are not permitted under Swedish law but may be agreed by collective bargaining." https://www.igloballaw.com/zero-hours-contracts/

You can add Iceland to that list as well.

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