Seasonal Worker Contracts Can Become Complicated: 'Casual' Employment Makes Employee Duty Unclear; An Opportunity For Full-Time Employment

By JC Santos

Dec 09, 2016 08:26 AM EST

Seasonal workers -- attending as relievers or "extra hands" during heavy sales seasons such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas sales -- employers can abuse directly or indirectly due to a lack of proper contracts. The lack of proper legal boundaries can lead the "casual" employment role into a complicated legal issue between employer and employee.

According to The Globe and Mail, featuring the opinions on seasonal employment by Rudner MacDonald LLP Co-Founder Stuart Rudner and company associate David Master, the "casual" state of seasonal employment -- a light "bit" of work -- could turn complicated when issues such as remuneration, minimum shifts or hours, length of employment, entitlement on termination and more arise during the employment.

The post stresses that despite the lightness of work because it is only for a month or a few months does not guarantee the employer and employee proper separation dues especially when the company decides to get another employee to fill the role the following season.

According to NBC New York, FedEx, Amazon, Macy's Inc. and USPS are all hiring seasonal workers. The post detailed that FedEx plans to add 50,000 seasonal positions until the peak holiday season to maintain its services. Amazon is looking to hire double the number with 120,000 employees assigned to logistics and manual logistics work such as wrapping and shipping.

For most employees, seasonal employment is an avenue for career success in the form of employment. Regularly becoming available whenever a local company calls for extra help during their peak seasons makes their presence known to these employers. Further performance analysis of their work in the future could merit them a full-time job in the same position or higher in the company.

This Christmas, seasonal employees become more prone to employment scams. Applicants are advised to research the company they intend to work with and if the invitations to work are legitimate. Some scammers use these brand names to take important details from would-be employees.