What to do when your shifts dry up
Julie has been working at the same bakery for 3 years, ever since she turned 14 years and 9 months. She’s pretty reliable for a teenager, and gets the work done but as this years’ birthday approaches, all of a sudden she starts to lose shifts. Younger and less efficient models take her Saturday and Sunday shifts, leaving her with a sensational budget of around $70 a week.
It’s a common scenario. You never get fired, but all of a sudden your shifts dwindle from four to one per week. Sometimes it’s because the business doesn’t have the capital to keep giving you as many shifts as you need. Sometimes it’s because you’ve done something unforgiveable like turn 18 and they can’t afford to pay you at a higher rate.
Whatever the reason, you’re left with a four-hour shift from 6am to 10am every second Sunday and the money you earn doesn’t quite have the capacity to support your three meals a day eating habits.
So what do you do?
Once you’ve recognised what’s happening, you might want to have a talk to your boss about it. Work out how much money you need a week to live comfortably and ask to be given the shifts that would provide that. It’s common practice to starve people of shifts in the hopes that they will just resign, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. If a business can no longer afford to employ you, they should be straight with you. So talking to your employer should be your first step.
It seems that the people most commonly affected by this situation are casualised and young, usually in their early twenties and below. They’re also the group least likely to be unionised so have no recourse to an industrial group to discuss what the next steps are. While this group has less to lose that older people with dependants, young people have unemployment figures much higher than the general population.
The Equal Opportunity Commission suggests that if you have lost shifts because you have turned 21, you may be able to make a complaint of age discrimination.
There are several other areas that are considered as a case for discrimination, should you lose shifts. These include; age, caring responsibilities, gender, marital or partnership status, pregnancy, race, religion, sexuality or partner’s identity. If you need to swap a shift because your elderly mother has a doctor ‘s appointment, then your employer has no right to reduce your shifts because you aren’t available at all opening hours. It’s illegal to reduce someone’s shifts because they happen to be pregnant and the employer doesn’t want to pay maternity leave.
The irony is that often the people that lose shifts have been there a long time, and are replaced by juniors that wouldn’t have an idea what the award wage was and wll be similarly replaced in a couple of years time. It would make better business sense to retain less staff who were more productive. It might even save the business some money along the way.
It’s not always possible or sensible, but of you’ve landed yourself with an employer who is going to drain away your shifts in an effort to make you quit, you might have a think and decide you will be well-shot if you find another job.
Have you ever had your shifts taken away from you?
What did you do about it?
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