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GAME staff discovered zero hours contracts move via mass Microsoft Teams calls
(www.eurogamer.net)
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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That's legal? Can a contract be changed willy nilly in the US like that? In the EU it's a least a month's notice and in some EU countries even 3 months notice!
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0Lmao, most workers in the US don't have a contract at all. They're under a system called "At Will Employment" that was part of breaking the Unions. They can quit at any time, but they can also be fired at any time, for nearly anything. (It can't be discrimination, but it could be the color of the shirt you wore that day)
So yeah the terms of your employment in the US can change at any time.
Read the article. It's the UK (which still has most EU employment law active). Now, I don't think it's illegal to do what they're doing. Effectively, I can bet I know exactly how they're framing this, and it'll be totally legal.
The calls were almost certainly initiating the redundancy process. That is, technically EVERYONE (probably below management) is being made redundant. As part of the redundancy process, an employer is expected to attempt to find internal opportunities for the employees to be culled, and this new position is what they are likely offering as said opportunity. I suspect this is working around a bit of a grey area in redundancy law. But, I don't think they're falling foul of any law. But, I'm not a legal expert.
So, at the end of the required redundancy period (it varies based on employment duration) they will either be let go (with whatever statutory redundancy pay they're owed) or re-employed under the new zero hours contract.
Personally, I think this has the potential to blow up in their face a bit. It's not allowed in the UK to employ someone on a zero-hour contract and not allow them to work elsewhere. Such a clause in a contract may be ignored. Now, this could well mean they say "Oh we need you on Wednesday" and you say "Well, actually I've already agreed a shift elsewhere on Wednesday" and there's really not much they can do about it. I also hope the people working there just move on.
The worst thing that can happen is that the parent company benefits from this. It'll just make other retail companies do the same in a race to the bottom.
Yes, made very clear in the article, thank you.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0Well, in the first line they reference an article from yesterday which made it very clear.
I'm not too sure why the response was so defensive. That point made up a miniscule part of my overall comment and wasn't even close to the primary subject matter.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0OK buddy, I'll leave you to your online persona :)
Totally off topic but what is that "Anti Commercial AI thingy" that you have linked? Is it to prevent AI scraping?
That's precisely it. Maybe I should add a blurb about that 🤔 (for later)
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11
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