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Comment by ecjhdnc2025 | Hacker News Reader

ecjhdnc2025·

Salaried !== full-time.

Millions of people in the UK are legally salaried workers on "zero-hours" contracts, where they aren't even guaranteed a minimum number of hours. Paid through PAYE (payroll), have workers rights, just not a guaranteed number of hours.

Most can choose when they work, many have more than one of these jobs.

It's not a good way to live but it's at least possibly a better way to live than the gig economy.

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I think you just misunderstand what salary means? If you do not have guaranteed hours you are not a salary employee, salary means you get paid the same amount on a certain schedule. You are describing hourly employees

Yes but the UK has the NHS, it's not possible in the US where employees have to healthcare benefits by federal mandate.

You can't have an employee on the payroll costing $1,500 a month in benefits who can choose to work 0 hours in a month.

I think you are missing a part of the Federal Healthcare Insurance Mandate (part of the ACA): the mandate is on the worker, not the employer. Many employers have no insurance benefits for their employers.

And then the other part of it: the penalty for not having healthcare insurance was deducted to $0 at the end of 2018. So there is currently no penalty at all (other than the massive ones if you get sick) to not carrying insurance.

This is simply not true. Any employer with 50 employees has a mandate to provide healthcare for employees.

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