Zero Hour Contract - 'Training Costs' clause

Eric5765

Hi,

My girlfriend started working on a zero hour contract for a franchised company a few months ago.

Long story short the company is managed terribly and doing a lot of illegal stuff - Refusing to pay people for the whole day for not clocking out, regularly underpaying people by 10-20% of the hours they actually worked and basically treating employees like slaves with no rights. They actually have a reputation for being a bad company within the company they are franchising in the area.

In her contract, there is a clause stating that if she leaves within 1 year of joining, she needs to pay the company £250 in 'training costs'. The charge itself is likely completely unjustifiable as she had no formal training and was effectively thrown into the deep end with very little assistance.

My question is this: If she leaves, as the contract is a zero hour one, can she skirt around this training cost by 'leaving' by simply telling her manager that she does not want any more hours? If someone turns down all hours by the company but does not officially hand in their notice, at what point to they stop being employed by said company and is it classed as that person quitting or does the company need to effectively fire them, meaning the charge would be void?

Similarly her contract has a notice period for leaving - But how can this be enforced in any way in a zero hour contract if you are not obliged to accept any work offered?

paddedjohn

Tell her just to refuse work, they won't be able to do anything about it.

sangie595

Eric5765 wrote: »

Hi,

My girlfriend started working on a zero hour contract for a franchised company a few months ago.

Long story short the company is managed terribly and doing a lot of illegal stuff - Refusing to pay people for the whole day for not clocking out Well if you don't clock out, there isn't any record of how long you worked. You could have just clocked in and worked out., regularly underpaying people by 10-20% of the hours they actually worked and basically treating employees like slaves with no rights. Not defending them, but they aren't employees, so actually they pretty much don't have any rights! They actually have a reputation for being a bad company within the company they are franchising in the area.

In her contract, there is a clause stating that if she leaves within 1 year of joining, she needs to pay the company £250 in 'training costs'. The charge itself is likely completely unjustifiable as she had no formal training and was effectively thrown into the deep end with very little assistance.If put to the test they would have to prove this to be a justifiable cost which reasonable covers the loss to them of "training" - based on what you say, they probably wouldn't be enforceable.

My question is this: If she leaves, as the contract is a zero hour one, can she skirt around this training cost by 'leaving' by simply telling her manager that she does not want any more hours? If someone turns down all hours by the company but does not officially hand in their notice, at what point to they stop being employed by said company and is it classed as that person quitting or does the company need to effectively fire them, meaning the charge would be void? She isn't an employee. Therefore there is no notice period. She simply refuses all further work. So there isn't any period at which she becomes "not employed" by them because she isn't employed in the first place.

Similarly her contract has a notice period for leaving - But how can this be enforced in any way in a zero hour contract if you are not obliged to accept any work offered? It can't

I would suggest that she not say she is leaving - just refuse hours when they allocate them and say she is busy. She isn't required to do anything other than say she can't do the hours they ask her to. That way, even though I think it is unenforceable, it becomes moot. She hasn't left, she simply isn't available for the hours they want her. Nothing they can do about that.