Well for me in my particular circumstances I can see that some zero hours contracts might work. However for most folk they are not a good thing and should not be used to replace more secure working arrangements.
This article titled “The Guardian view on zero-hours: the number that keeps getting bigger” was written by Editorial, for The Guardian on Wednesday 25th February 2015 20.07 UTCLet’s not be sour. The bounceback in jobs during the current recovery has been staggering – exceeding all predictions. During the depths of the slump too, although things were dreadful, the UK shed far fewer posts than any of the macroeconomic models suggested. Whereas in the past there had been something close to a one-for-one proportional relation between lost jobs and lost output, for every three percentage points of GDP that disappeared after 2008, only 1% of jobs went up in smoke.
But let’s not be blinkered either. If there is reason to be cheerful in the quantity of jobs in a famously flexible labour market, there is reason to be fearful when it comes to the quality. Underemployment, perma-temping and the recasting of low-grade staffers as “self-employed” hires shorn of all rights were striking features of working life in the recession, and all trends that have been stubbornly slow to reverse in the recovery. That much is reaffirmed every month when the official labour market statistics appear. Nothing, however, sums up the pall of insecurity that has befallen so much of the workforce like zero-hours contracts. We can’t map the numbers over long years in this case, because – until recently – the arrangement was still so exotic that no proper figures were collated. Slowly but surely, however, the information gap is being filled and, in every new droplet of data, zero emerges as the number that keeps getting bigger.
At the dawn of the slump it was estimated that there were fewer than 200,000 “jobs” without guaranteed hours. Since then much has changed – the term “zero hours” has gained currency, definitions have changed, and new data sources have been tapped to tally up the individual workers affected, recognising that some will rely on multiple jobs. But through all the refinements and seasonal blips that might colour the figures, there has been only one trend. The Office for National Statistics reported on Wednesday that there were 1.8m zero-hour contracts, and 697,000 zero-hours workers, both numbers that have been climbing fast.
Not every no-strings contract represents exploitation, it’s true, but too many do. While there are a few professionals happy to put in a well-paid hour on an as-and-when-needed basis, the ONS confirmed that the real zero-hours boom is in pubs, hotels and restaurants, sectors where low pay is rampant. While some big zero-hours groups, such as students, may be content to avoid fixed weekly commitments, it is dismaying to learn that it is mostly women who are working with zero security. A sharp rise in zero-hours workers of two to five years’ standing confirms that this way of doing business is becoming not only more widespread but also more entrenched.
After much delay, the coalition talks about banning the most abusive contracts, which actually bar staff from seeking employment with anyone else while they hang around waiting for shifts that may not come their way. It may be a start, but it’s not enough. At the very least, zero-hours workers must be given – as Labour proposes – a right to demand steady hours after six months.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
You must be logged in to post a comment.