This headline is almost incoherent, I wish they’d stop teaching journalists about newspaper shorthand headlines. We’re not limited to broadleaf sized headlines any more, just put some fucking words in there so it makes sense.
I have a very hard time understanding these headlines, but I normally blame it on my English (English isn’t my first language), but good to know that that’s not the case. Reading them twice or more doesn’t help. I just give up and let it go.
It’s honestly a problem for native speakers. So many times headlines make no sense or are extremely misleading.
Yes, even just the first paragraph makes sense.
Staff members were told of GAME’s impending change to force staff onto zero hours contracts, first reported yesterday by Eurogamer, via mass video calls held on Microsoft Teams.
I got to ask, has reading comprehension really come down that much in the recent decades?
Could the title be expanded to be more prosaic? Sure!
But at the same time, it’s intuitively and entirely understandable.Who? GAME staff
What? Discovered something
What exactly? That they’re moving to zero hour contracts
How? Via a mass Microsoft Teams callOr, written together, the title up above. And that’s a completely normal sentence structure, it’s essentially how your brain should expect a sentence conveying that information to be structured, or the final part would be at the start (“Via a mass microsoft teams call…”).
What exactly? That they’re moving to zero hour contracts
This isnt what the headline says though. “Discovered zero hour contracts” isnt how normal people speak. I have no clue if a mass teams call means they discovered some people were already on contracts, or that they were moving everyone to them, or some people, or (not knowing what a zero hour contract is) that the company has new contracts with game publishers.
You took your own understanding of the headline and even in your “its simple” added details that weren’t there originally.
I just find it weird that you felt compelled to post an explanation for something that is “intuitively and entirely understandable”. It’s almost as if you knew that lots of people couldn’t understand it.
I read the article and it’s not really any more clear.
Are you paid to craft distraction posts? The headline and article are clear but your post (clearly upvoted by bots) is now the point of discussion (likely some responders are also the same bot accounts).
How much do you earn in service of corporate interests?
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, but it is definitely odd.
In my opinion, the headline is very clear.
American here, what’s a “zero hour contract”?
You’re an employee but not guaranteed to work any hours at all?
Yep, exactly that. There are laws that say if you work more than a certain number of hours per week, you’re entitled to benefits like pension, paid holiday, etc. Zero hours contracts let companies get away with not providing those, as they’ll keep each individual staff member below the required hours, because there’s no guarantee of a minimum number of hours in their contract.
It’s absolutely atrocious, but the government spins it to make it sound like a benefit by saying you have extra time, you can lead a flexible life. What it means in reality for most people is that they need multiple jobs and still get no benefits that a full time job would provide.
In America it’s called “Full Time” vs “Part Time”.
Full Time is generally 35 to 40 hours, benefits like sick pay, vacation pay, 401K, etc.
Anything under 35 is Part Time, no benefits. But you can still be guaranteed hours up to 35, generally 20.
I don’t know of anyone here who would take a 0 hour job, unless it were a “no show job”. But that’s a different deal. ;)
We have part-time jobs as well, but those usually come with a minimum number of hours. Zero hours contracts were brought in to bypass those rules. Since zero hours contracts came in, part-time contracts practically disappeared.
I mean, I worked at GAME over a couple of decades ago as a teenager and they were using zero hour (and near-zero) contracts back then.
Surprising they ever stopped tbh, awful company even before Mike Ashley got it from the bargain bin.
