How should workers deal with bosses who increase the labor supply?

Sorry for not replying here, I meant to. But basically I'm not really sure what can be done, other than trying to get together with the new workers and basically say that it's not in the interests of anyone if no one gets enough hours.

I guess basically what would be best for you would be a system of guaranteed minimum hours. It seems like some form of disruptive direct action campaign would be needed to achieve this, but obviously that would be difficult to get going with such a casual workforce.

Not particularly helpful for your current situation, I'm afraid. But you asked for historical examples. Historically radical unions, both for this purpose and to get around the problem of organisers being blacklisted by employers, where they could, took partial control over hire and fire away from the employers. For example the Swedish SAC invented the Register system. Similarly US longshoremen and some other unions took control over the labour supply. The basic idea is that the employers do not hire and fire directly. They have to approach the union and say they want x workers for some many days. The union provide the workers, the bosses get no say over who they are. The hours and rate of pay are also set by the union. Of course there are lots of potential problems with this approach, as the history of unions getting mobbed-up in the US demonstrates. But then, if the only way you can think of to keep the mafia away is to make sure the union has no real power, then that's another defeat in itself. In recent years, the SAC has been trying to re-introduce the Register concept for precarious workers in the 21st century. I haven't caught up with how things have progressed in the last couple of years, but it sounded pretty interesting when I came across it a couple of years ago.

I've been discussing this recently with a few people in this situation. My instinct is that the 'correct' demand is not guarantied minimum weekly/monthly hours, it's guaranteed minimum weekly/monthly pay, but obviously that's a far harder one to win.

And with wages at subsistence level a long strike is not possible, and other techniques can be easily combatted by not giving 'ringleaders' any more shifts, since there's always someone to do the job.

Got to hand it to the bosses, they know how to rig the deck.

Any contract without an explicit guaranteed minimum number of hours is essentially a ticket for the bosses to play divide and rule over who gets the hours, along with a free reign to constructively dismiss union members and 'troublemakers' by starving them out. That's before we even get to bank holiday pay, sick pay, paid holiday entitlement, and unsocial hours rates, none of which can even be defined without an agreement on weekly hours.

But sure, in an era of depression with an ever-swelling army of reserve labour, defending existing terms & conditions against this swamping tactic is very hard, unless the work process itself can't function without the labour of the more experienced workers.

Hey tastybrain, i think you'll be surprised what VERY part-time workers can/are willing to do, so just give it a go - nothing to lose but your chains, right?

Anyway. I've been dealing with this very directly, this week, too, in my tiny bike courier fleet. I've been pushing a union campaign in the local industry for a long time now, a known troublemaker.

Fortunately we have some legal rights, because we're permanent employees(not that we're treated that way on a daily basis, hence the problems, but at least we've got it on paper).

I'm guessing you're casual(you work in a university, duh) so i'm guessing you have zero legal rights in regards to minimum hours. I also don't know what country you're from, and have no idea about any legal systems outside Australia. But if they have anything similar to what we have, check out if there's minimum lengths for shifts per day. E.g. if you bring a casual worker in for two hours, you have to pay them for 3 or 4, because the law says so.

Failing that, you could probably push a very successful campaign for minimum hours if you give it a shot. Just talk to everyone else, ask them about how broke they are, ask them what they think of pushing for minimum guaranteed hours, on paper. Give it a go, worst case scenario is everyone you work with is a scab jerk, and tells you to piss off. Then you just lay low until 60% staff turnover and give it another shot - one of those unsung perks of a disastrously casual workforce..

Dare to struggle, dare to win!