Due to midnight launches, late night shopping days and special events with early opening times, I am expected to be ready to work anywhere between the hours of 5am and 3am. Often I will be called up with only a couple of hours' notice to cover a shift if somebody goes sick.

There is no consistency in how many hours I will work, sometimes it's over 16 hours which means I'm no longer entitled to job seekers' allowance or housing benefit but often my hours drop below this meaning I have to go through the laborious process of applying again, having only just signed off.

Frustrating

This is even more frustrating when I'd happily work full-time if I could just be given the hours. Instead I spend my free time looking for supplementary jobs (impossible considering how flexible I have to be) and explaining to assessors my ever changing situation.

I can't plan my social life as my hours are never regular and I'm forced to accept any shift offered because if I don't, management will put me at the bottom of the list of people to ask.

I struggle each month to make my rent and I'm constantly on edge wondering if I will have enough left over each month to be able to afford more than one or two meals a day. I go into work sick, tired and often hungry and sometimes work up to seven hours straight with no breaks.

Due to lower level managers and supervisors being salaried, they often work more than 20 extra hours a week just to ensure that all tasks are completed. If staff were employed on genuinely full-time contracts the workplace would be far less daunting. But often you're left with a contradictory situation where most of the staff are complaining that they don't get enough hours while others are grumbling that they work too many unpaid hours and feel unappreciated and exploited.

Staff are cynically employed on minimal contracted hours and are pitted against each other. More hours are only offered to those who have the most sales, complete the most unpaid hours of extra training and be the most flexible with their hours.

The ones that don't adapt to this fast-paced, highly competitive environment just get their four or eight hours a week. There's nothing that can be done about this as that's all they are contractually entitled to.

Insecure

Unions need to reach out to this ever-growing layer of insecure workers.

We need a £10 an hour minimum wage now and at the same time, an end to zero-hour contracts. Many young workers have recently been attacked in the press, particularly by the Tories for being lazy, unproductive and unwilling to work. Give me enough hours and a wage I can genuinely live on and I will happily work it.

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Finance appeal

The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.

The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.

The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.

The Socialist Party's material is more vital than ever, so we can continue to report from workers who are fighting for better health and safety measures, against layoffs, for adequate staffing levels, etc.
When the health crisis subsides, we must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.

Inevitably, during the crisis we have not been able to sell the Socialist and raise funds in the ways we normally would.

We therefore urgently appeal to all our viewers to donate to our Fighting Fund.