Legal update; from today employees on zero hour contracts have more protection

Crazy_Jamie

Just so everyone is aware, the Exclusivity Terms in Zero Hour Contracts (Redress) Regulations 2015 come into force today. They provide that;

1) Any dismissal of an employee working under a zero hours contract is automatically unfair if the principal reason for dismissal is that he or she breached a contractual term prohibiting him or her from working for another employer.

2) There is no qualifying period required to bring such an unfair dismissal claim. In other words, you do not need to have been working for your employer for two years, as is the case with most unfair dismissal claims.

3) It is unlawful to submit a zero hour contract worker to detriments if they work for another employer in breach of a clause prohibiting them from doing so.

It is worth noting that in the last point it is unlawful to submit a zero hour contract worker to detriments, not a zero hour contract 'employee'. The distinction is reasonably significant from a legal perspective in that it effectively offers wider protection.

Of course it remains to be seen how effective these Regulations will be or how easy it will be for employees/workers to bring and succeed in claims under these Regulations, but on paper at least the protection that they offer is reasonably significant.

HardCoreProgrammer

1. Not sure how much protection this will give. If you are on zero hour contract, dismissal is not necessary - they can simply stop giving you any further work.

4. Don't forget you have to pay £1200 up front to take an employer to court.

Crazy_Jamie

HardCoreProgrammer wrote: »

1. Not sure how much protection this will give. If you are on zero hour contract, dismissal is not necessary - they can simply stop giving you any further work.

True, but that is where the detriment protection comes in. How easy or difficult it is to actually prove detriment remains to be seen, though as regards protection from both dismissal and detriment I suspect contemporaneous evidence will be key. In other words, if an employer either dismisses an employee or stops giving them hours shortly after finding out that they are working elsewhere, the employer would likely have something of an evidential burden to demonstrate why they acted in that manner if not due to the employee's other position.

HardCoreProgrammer wrote:

4. Don't forget you have to pay £1200 up front to take an employer to court.

It's not £1,200 up front. It is £250 to issue the claim, and then a £950 hearing fee further down the line. It is possible to make an application to waive one or both fees depending on your financial situation. The CAB have a decent enough guide to it which can be found here. The fact that fees can be waived is certainly something to be aware of in this situation, given that zero hour contracts tend to be used in lower paid positions.