Pension on a zero hours contract

woolly_wombat

I suggest your son makes an appointment with Citizens Advice and see what they make of his contract and the absence of a work related pension.
Would be interested to hear what CA have to say.

Ozro

Hi apologies I seem to have confused everyone - he is currently employed at a gym with a contract. The contract says they do not offer a pension at this company.
I was just trying to find a pension that would be multi purpose I suppose, that he could pay into now as an employed person but if in the future he does go self employed, the pension doesn't change - I don't know whether it would or not!
I will look at the links sent thank you and try and work out what is best for him and thank you everyone for your comments

MX5huggy

The company can’t just put it in the contract that they don’t offer a pension. There are reasons why your son might not be eligible (age, doesn’t earn enough etc) but they have to by law offer a pension.

I would look at Vanguard’s pension it’s cheap for small investors. 

MeteredOut

OP, this thread might be of interest to you

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81023750/#Comment_81023750

JoeCrystal

MX5huggy said:

The company can’t just put it in the contract that they don’t offer a pension. There are reasons why your son might not be eligible (age, doesn’t earn enough etc) but they have to by law offer a pension.

I would look at Vanguard’s pension it’s cheap for small investors. 

I would still suggest that he should look at the company's pension. Especially if he finds himself staying there for an extended period, and if it can be deducted through PAYE, he has already gotten into a habit of contributing to a pension scheme.

I am still very concerned about the employer's lack of understanding of their legal responsibilities. It makes me wonder what else they are cutting corners on or not following the laws regarding their employees (I hope they are paying their staff minimum wages, which is still an ongoing problem today). I am wondering what the article in the contract said regarding the pension; is there any chance you can post exactly what the article says? Maybe the contract is outdated, and the employer did not bother updating it to the current minimum standard. 

My contact with my employer still says they offer a stakeholder pension scheme but do not make any pension contributions. But then, the contract written in 2008 pre-dates the auto-enrolment rules, so it is no longer part of the terms and conditions. (Amusingly, Payroll recently confirmed that I can still open and contribute to the stakeholder pension scheme separately from the auto-enrollment pension scheme if I want to.)

Ozro

Thank you, I will have a look at the contract again, yes maybe it is an old contract. To date though and he has rec'd two pay packets now, no pension contribution has been deduced and no one has mentioned a pension. My son is reluctant to say anything as it would probably be that they would just offer him less hours per week as he is on the zero contract.  Hopefully at some point the law will change as zero contracts are only good for people who want that sort of flexibility. As soon as you have bills to pay it is very difficult not knowing what you will earn per month.  He is on minimum wage so the company have that bit right. I suspect this will go nowhere so in the meantime think it is important to set something up to start him off.

pterri

My not very helpful suggestion is that he finds another gym, assuming there is one nearby. It doesn’t sound like that are a good employer. Best of luck. 

xylophone

I'm not at all sure that the company can just shuffle off its responsibility to offer a pension.

https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/employers

https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/business-advisers/automatic-enrolment-guide-for-business-advisers/staff-employed-on-irregular-hours-or-incomes

Has he asked colleagues about the workplace pension situation?

MeteredOut

xylophone said:

I'm not at all sure that the company can just shuffle off its responsibility to offer a pension.

There's no clear evidence the company has done that. The OP has not yet clarified whether his/her son does qualify as per the rules provided in the first response to this thread (ie, age, earnings)

https://www.gov.uk/workplace-pensions/joining-a-workplace-pension

They have stated he is on minimum wage, and with a zero hours contract, its probably that they don't meet the earnings threshold.

xylophone

There's no clear evidence the company has done that. 

True - The OP stated

 His workplace do not offer a pension and it specifically says that in his contract. Presume it’s because they have him on zero hours and the PTs in the gym are self employed.

It is not clear whether there is no scheme at all or just that there is no scheme offered to certain workers.

Nevertheless

https://www.gov.uk/workplace-pensions/joining-a-workplace-pension

When your employer does not have to automatically enrol you

If there is a scheme he could join it?