The Zero Hour Contract

chewmylegoff

CLAPTON wrote: »

yes of course that's true; just as it's true for full time jobs

the issue is what is the alternative; simply not employ them at all?

well it seems that supermarkets are carrying on this practice - they would still need people to stack shelves and so on if they didn't employ people on 0 hour contracts, so they would just have to employ people 'properly'.

i don't know whether it is practical or not but it may be that a cap should be applied - e.g. you can only use 0 hour contracts if you have less than 50 employees (including the 0 hour contract people). or something like that.

Wheezy_2

CLAPTON wrote: »

good to see that Greece, Spain, Portugal (and Luxembourg) do so well in the employee protection stakes.

I'm sure you noticed the likes of China, Korea, Indonesia, Brazil...also featuring in the table.

CLAPTON

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Were into moral hazard here, but the alternative would bt to emply and pay for them on an hourly basis. If there is no work on a particular day, that's not the employees fault.

My cousin works for a delivery firm on a saturday. Basically his job entails 50% sitting in a portacabin playing cards and 50% driving. The company offers same day deliveries. In order to carry them out, they need drivers. The drivers sit in the portacabin and drive if required.

Without the drivers, the company wouldn't be able to function. The drivers get paid (allbeit a low wage) regardless of if they actually deliver something or not. The employer, I would presume recognises the need to have the manpower ready should a customer make an order. The employees are expected to work through until Sunday if they are required (long distance driving).

That seems absolutely fair to me. The employer needs them to be flexible, and treats them with respect, and pays them for their time.

Employing people but only paying people for actualy doing a job at the discretion of the company, but requiring them to wait around just incase is pretty immoral practice if you ask me.

I'm actually surprised anyone finds it fair to be honest.

anecdotal stories always prove the rule.

one can consider that this totally immoral practice applies to all self employed people;
as I understand it people like self employed plumbers, electrician, decorators, IT consultants only get paid when they work.
It appears that there are no laws to force customers to employ there services and so sometimes they sit around with nothing to do and don't get paid.

For the record I don't thing it's fair do you?

N1AK

Graham_Devon wrote: »

There was a piece on newsnight about unemployment, and it started off with suggesting how the current figures are masked by far more self employed people, evidential increase in part time jobs, and something which I had never heard of until last night.....the zero hour contract.

We employ around a dozen 0-hour lorry drivers. It is effectively like operating an internal temp agency. We pay them the same rate as agency but avoid the fees, in return they get a few perks and are given priority over agency workers. We also hire a number of them when permanent positions come up.

I certainly wouldn't say I'm proud of it, fortunately I don't work in logistics, but it makes sense as a business. If we hire additional fixed hour staff then we end up paying for capacity we don't need so we'd likely use agency staff instead in which case they still wouldn't get guaranteed hours.

Graham_Devon

CLAPTON wrote: »

anecdotal stories always prove the rule.

one can consider that this totally immoral practice applies to all self employed people;
as I understand it people like self employed plumbers, electrician, decorators, IT consultants only get paid when they work.
It appears that there are no laws to force customers to employ there services and so sometimes they sit around with nothing to do and don't get paid.

For the record I don't thing it's fair do you?

Self employment is a completely different ballgame. You are completely removing the employer / employee aspect.

N1AK

Graham_Devon wrote: »

That seems absolutely fair to me. The employer needs them to be flexible, and treats them with respect, and pays them for their time.

Employing people but only paying people for actualy doing a job at the discretion of the company, but requiring them to wait around just incase is pretty immoral practice if you ask me.

0-hour staff aren't required to wait around unpaid, in fact it would legally have to be counted as worked hours for minimum wage purposes if they did.

0-hour contracts have benefits. They allow for employment that would not otherwise exist (if I only need a package delivering once every 5 weeks it might be better for me to employ someone on 3x the normal wage on a 0 hours basis).

You seem to be assuming that if all 0-hour jobs had to be made fixed hours or removed that everyone would get a fixed hour role instead which is nonsense. It might be worth losing some jobs in order to improve those that remain but it certainly isn't clear cut.

bugslet

I'm curious, N1AK, since we obviously work in a similar field, what do the drivers do when you hit a quiet period and there is little chance of work? Do they go on agency? What happens if you ring them and they are on agency/working for someone else on a zero hours contract? Can they dip in and out of JSA?

We pay our all the way through and take the hit when it's quiet ( like the last two weeks!) and use subbies when needed.

N1AK

bugslet wrote: »

I'm curious, N1AK, since we obviously work in a similar field, what do the drivers do when you hit a quiet period and there is little chance of work? Do they go on agency? What happens if you ring them and they are on agency/working for someone else on a zero hours contract? Can they dip in and out of JSA?

We pay our all the way through and take the hit when it's quiet ( like the last two weeks!) and use subbies when needed.

We don't really have busy/quiet periods. I'd guestimate that 9/10 weeks fall within +/-5% of our average driver hours. There certainly aren't extended quiet periods.

We have quiet a high turnover of 0-hour workers. A lot will also do some agency work while on contract with us. Generally they will time it for the days we are least likely to use them (in which case it just limits the total work they can do for us). We'll normally confirm with 0-hours if they will be available and what hour restrictions etc they have the day before we are considering using them. I'm afraid I don't know how JSA works in this case although I could ask about if you like?

usa1

I had an O hours/Bank work contract with Social Services. I loved it as I could state when I could work and which dates I was`nt available to work. It works both ways between employeer and employee. I think it works if there is flex on both sides.

bugslet

That was comprehensive!:)

No need to ask on the JSA, I was just having a ponder.

It sounds as if that's the most reasonable way of working a zero hours contract, if they have an idea of when they are unlikely to be wanted and can work round it.

Even if I wanted, I don't think I could ever convert to a proportion of staff working a zero hours contract, we're very specialist and that causes its own set of problems with employment.

Thanks for the info, I was just curious.