Is this legal? Part time job

[Catsandcannedbeans]

Firstly this is one my DN has just got. It’s in a cafe, working in the kitchen. She says it all seems good but they just have start times. So you’ll start at either 8, 10, or 11:30 and you finish whenever they send you. They normally have 6 people in the kitchen on busy days and 3 on to close, but there’s no structure on how or when people finish. You don’t know if you’ll be 8-6 or 8-4 or what. I used to work in kitchens and we always had set start and finish times, sometimes you’d get away early if you were lucky, but there was always a finish time.

I’m primarily worried about her getting stiffed for money and hours, but also this kind of sounds a bit dogey? We are in Scotland by the way 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿.

Does she get paid for her hours? Does she get her legally entitled breaks?

She hasn’t started yet, she just had a trial shift which was supposed to be 2 hours (8-10) but ended up being 8-5. She said she got a 20 min break so yes she’s getting her break.

If she is under the age of 18 she is not allowed to do a 9 hour shift and she is entitled to 30 mins break.

Normal practice in hospitality now, as long as she's not working more hours than legally allowed for her age and getting the breaks she should, and paid until she finishes.
You don't get finish times because the level of business isn't that predictable, you might get no one in from 3pm, or 5 people, or be completely swamped until close with tons of clearing up to do after close, because that's the nature of the business and the customer base demands flexibility within the industry, so that obviously demands flexibility from the staff within the industry.

I worked in hospitality in the early 00s and we didn't get finish times. Your shift might be 11-F which meant you would stay until finish when the last guests had gone and all the cleaning up was done. It's normal in my experience.
Split shifts were also normal so 7-3 then 6-F was standard for my boyfriend at the time who was a chef.

She should make sure she keeps a record of her hours worked each time so she can check she's paid for them. If she needs to leave at a certain time, she should be sure to say when she arrives so that everyone can plan.

DD1 works in a pub and signs in to the till when she arrives/signs out when she leaves and this functions as a time-clock so she is paid for those hours and then the manager can check who is due tips from that day/shift.

She is 17. She is pretty adamant that we “don’t go kicking up a fuss” because apparently all the people there work long shifts. When I picked her up yesterday I did see a lot of very young looking staff.

Her mum and dad (my db and sil) are concerned with her walking home in the dark because of the area and I said I’d pick her up that’s why I was a bit worried about the finish times as it gets into winter. She’s starting driving lessons soon anyway so hopefully that’s not going to be for long.

I will tell her to keep a log of her hours as well. I’m just a bit worried as she is a bit shy so she might not want to assert herself - but at the end of the day she needs to learn somehow and hopefully this can be an opportunity.

8-5 for a 'trial' shift? That is absolutely taking the piss. A full day's work for what? Cost the employer absolutely nothing, and you can bet your bottom dollar they do that to every single applicant.

They did it to my dd when she applied for a pub job locally. It was supposed to be a trial couple of hours to see how she got on, and she ended up working a full shift on a really busy Sunday lunchtime and afternoon, and did a load of roast dinner waitressing as well. When she rang a day or two later to ask if she'd got the job, the manager said she'd have to do another trial shift, because she, the manager, hadn't been there the first time to see how it went. DD was livid and didn't bother. She later found out that the landlord was well known for doing it.

What does her contract say ? If it's zero hours they will chop and change hours to suit. Seems the norm nowadays