I don't understand what you're getting at. So offering someone employment (do this for money) should only be allowed if it's at a consistent frequency (full time) and at a guaranteed non-variable amount? What if the job they're being hired to do does not have consistent demand? Or the service provided has competition, or varying costs, which requires price changes?

Yes. Workers should not be at the mercy of an unreliable paycheck.

> What if...

Can you give an example of what you're talking about?

Think about the demand for tax preparers each year. Higher demand Jan-Apr. Lower demand the rest of the year. Should companies be forced to hire tax preparers full time year round or should they be free to contract for only when they are needed?

That example isn't comparable to the kind of contracts that were originally being discussed. A contract with fixed hours on the scale of months doesn't have the same degree of stress as one with hours varying from day to day, week to week.

Fixed term contracts are allowable, because taking that thinking to the extreme would mean never being able to terminate a worker, even in cases where their employment becomes obsolete.

The issue revolves around "technically being employed" - having a contract which doesn't entail consistent or sufficient hours, and then not even having the choice to work enough to get by. This unfairly pumps employment figures for companies and the government, who can say that they have X workers, while denying an honest representation of how much people are actually able to work.

My original question was - is there an example of a job which could justify these kinds of fluctuations in working hours and subsequent income?

There are so many, as a simple example, think basically any contractor that does work on houses.

Painter, they can only work on days it's nice out. Kinda hard to paint when it's raining, and you can't get the day back.