Kroger reducing part-time staff hours

[snugglegirl05]

I have been working at Kroger since the end of April.

I was working 29 to 30 hours a week.

Now the part-time staff hours have been cut to 12 to 20 hours. This week I will be working 16.5 hours.

30 hours was adequate for me in order for my husband, who works full-time, and I to continue living where we live. 16.5 hours a week is not enough. We live in income based housing. We cannot afford to move.

My job counselor called me last week to ask me what my work schedule was because she wanted to follow up on how I was doing at Kroger as well as provide some job coaching. When I told her what my schedule was, she told me that she would have to get with me this coming week.

So I e-mailed her my work schedule for this coming week, and I let her know that I need to be consistently working 30 hours a week. I let her know that if I continue receiving 16.5 hours a week, I will have to continue requesting partial unemployment as well as look for a full-time job 3 times a week, which is a requirement of continuing to receive partial unemployment. The other option is to transfer me to a different location that can schedule me for 30 hours a week on a consistent basis.

So I have to wait for her response.

[Food Lady]

This is what my job is doing but fortunately I can cash in vacation hours and I have a bit of a savings. Still, it's frustrating to have to deal with irritated customers because we're purposely understaffed and I'm willing to work full time and not allowed to.

[Dreamstalker]

I'm kinda in the same boat. The minimum people should be getting by union contract is 17 hours/week, company claims 15. Max according to law is 30, Corp is claiming max is 28.5 or some odd number.

In general my average hours bounce between 15 and 24. I've seen coworkers getting as few as 11 (then bitch about not getting enough hours, if you know the minimum then go to the union and no I can't do that for you). It seems like the competent people are getting our hours cut and is it any surprise when things go to hell?

Not many of us want full time status (other jobs/looking/school and they treat official fulltimers like dirt), but we're willing to work as many hours as we can otherwise. Corporate refuses to give the store hours for some nebulous 'fault' and then we get yelled at when things are slow/disorganized/not getting done (resulting in a 'punishment' of fewer available hours...round and round we go).

[Rosco the Iroc]

don't worry you'll get $15/hr soon. But only get to work 10 hrs.

[EricKei]

*aHEM* Let's keep this one on the friendly side of the Fratching line, folks. It's toeing the line so far. If anyone starts a thread on the topic there/joins an existing one, please post it in here with a note.

[laborcat]

I'm kinda in the same boat. The minimum people should be getting by union contract is 17 hours/week, company claims 15. Max according to law is 30, Corp is claiming max is 28.5 or some odd number.

That contract is a legal binding document and if that were my workplace I'd be up in corporate and the union until they honored it. There should not be any questions about minimum hours unless the contract is extremely poorly worded. They tried to cut hours under contract minimum once where I work. Once. I got all up in management's business. I didn't spend all that time negotiating that thing to have them schedule part timers eleven hours a week.

[snugglegirl05]

Here is the e-mail I received from my job counselor...

You have to give all employers at least 120 days, so that they can determine whether or not to offer you full time work. Never quit (or) leave your current employment with Krogers.

Also, please give them your personal cell phone number. One of the managers called our office to see if you could work more hours. Please update your number in their computer system as soon as possible.

Lastly, you cannot request a transfer until you have worked consistently for at (least 90 days) with good productivity and no absences, etc..

Again, you must call, email or text our office each Tuesday between the hours of 9am-4pm each Tuesday.

My question is this...

Now what do I do?

I did save my counselor's reply in a folder in Outlook, which I use for my e-mail. This way I have documentation to give to my landlord in case she requests paycheck stubs from me. According to my husband, she wants both of us working full-time. He knows from dealing with her in the past when he was working part-time that she told him that he needs to be working full-time. The e-mail has the office phone number of my employment counselor.