There seems to be a wide difference from area to area about becoming full time. at my store i work with a guy who has been at kroger 30 years,but he quit for several years and returned maybe 15 years ago. He is still a Part timer,working on average fourty five to fifty hours every week. I have been there a year and he has NEVER had a week with under 40 hours(unless sick) which he was once. why is he not automatically put to "full time" status? seems to me no one in our store(a very big one) has been upgraded to full time. When they make out our schedules,they schedule us for 4 or 6 hours,but we allways end up working 8 hours. What a Union?
-- Edited by goodwill on Monday 11th of June 2012 05:18:48 PM
I work in the #1 store in the Kroger company so I get to see a lot of this type of situation... Taking into account that each child company of Kroger and the union contracts they have negotiated vary somewhat, this information may not be entiely accurate...
There are no guidelines for determining what exactly is "full time" and what is "part-time" in accordance with federal labor laws. The Department of Labor leaves these distinctions up to the employeer which is then used as a bargaining tool between the company and the union.
Typically, your union contract requires only that the company maintain a "minimum" number of what the company classifies as a full time employee. Out here in UFCW 8, it's 30%. So an employee working 40+ hours weekly for several months straight is not guarenteed full time status simply due to the hours worked. I have yet to see a UFCW contract that specifies beyond the requirement of maintaining a minimum number of full time employees and making a person full time is completely at the descrition of the company, not the union, regardless of seniority.
Also, there are no maximum number of hours that a part time person is permitted to work. So you can literally see a part time employee with 20 years service working 50+ hours weekly.
Where your store director is benefiting is in the payscale difference between a part time employee and a full time employee... That part time employee with 20 years service might be getting 50 hours a week, but he's also working for $4.61 ($13.69 part time food clerk top pay versus $18.30 for full time food clerk top pay... rates vary based on company, union and division) less than a full time employee with the same time of service would be making. There are also ELMS considerations involved... Is that part time employee theoretically working at a full time $18.30 payrate? It's pure profit for a store directore to work a part time employee who gives a full time effort, even if they work overtime.
You see it all the time... people make journeyman payrates and then they stop giving that 110% because they made it to the top pay... No need to prove themselves anymore. Big mistake... Any smart store director will give hours to a part time employee who's hungry for a full time position because they get paid less and produce more.
