# Zero hour contracts



## FM001 (Aug 6, 2013)

Been in the news in that 4% of the working population are now on zero hour contracts, makes you wonder how the young get onto the property ladder with no guaranteed hours or regular income.


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## Estellaa (Aug 6, 2013)

it's ridiculous, luckily i have a part time job with contracted hours. but my other half doesn't, like this week he has two shifts, they will text him on the morning asking if he can come in if they have spare shifts if not those 2 10hour shifts are it for the week.. but then his friend who has been there longer may i add only has one shift this week? its ridiculous, i want to save for a place to rent at this rate we won't be able to until we both find better jobs and we all know how difficult that is.


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## Northerner (Aug 6, 2013)

All we've seen since the election is a gradual erosion of worker's employment rights and security, with the recession used as an excuse and a cover. More people may be in work, but working fewer hours at lower pay  Just wish the Opposition would wake up - they should be tearing the Coalition to shreds!


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## Caroline (Aug 7, 2013)

SOme time ago my son went for an interview at a place who was looking for bank cleaners, he would be called when they needed an extra person to cover leave and sickness. He's never been called and we have since found out the place does this to say they are employing staff but they don't actually want to pay wages if they can help it.

It would be all the same if he wanted to get married or set up home on his own as an adult and he says himself he's lucky to have someone who is willing to help him till he gets a proper paid job.

His not working puts extra strain on the household budget because he needs stationary (paper, envelopes, stamps, cartridges for the printer) so he can apply for jobs. SOme of the applications are as long as a novel.


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## ypauly (Aug 7, 2013)

Northerner said:


> All we've seen since the election is a gradual erosion of worker's employment rights and security, with the recession used as an excuse and a cover. More people may be in work, but working fewer hours at lower pay  Just wish the Opposition would wake up - they should be tearing the Coalition to shreds!



But these contracts were very very popular well before the election. The company I just left had been using them since 2006, it's a similar story where Jen used to work.

It was big business's way of curbing the rising employment costs under labour that had not only made the country uncompetitive but that had seen many millions of jobs go east.


I don't agree with these contracts, indeed they should be banned but the blame for them isn't the coalition, though they can be blamed for doing naff all about them.

Read for yourself. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract


I would also like to know what employment rights I have lost since the election?


another interesting article. http://fullfact.org/factchecks/zero_hours_contracts-29130

These things should be banned, there is no doubt about that, but to try and blame the coalition is wrong especially when the labour created recession is mentioned. They had 13 years to stop this and they didn't they allowed it to grow and grow.


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## Northerner (Aug 7, 2013)

ypauly said:


> These things should be banned, there is no doubt about that, but to try and blame the coalition is wrong especially when the labour created recession is mentioned. They had 13 years to stop this and they didn't they allowed it to grow and grow.



Labour created recession? Would things have been any different under the Conservatives? I very much doubt it. Would there have been greater scrutiny of the financial markets? This is a global recession that very few countries escaped, certainly in the west  You could argue that Labour built up a great debt which has made recovery difficult, but the collapse of the banks would have happened anyway.


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## ypauly (Aug 7, 2013)

Northerner said:


> Labour created recession? Would things have been any different under the Conservatives? I very much doubt it. Would there have been greater scrutiny of the financial markets? This is a global recession that very few countries escaped, certainly in the west  You could argue that Labour built up a great debt which has made recovery difficult, but the collapse of the banks would have happened anyway.



I think not and the reason is simple, they ciuld have deregilated further well before 1997 but didn't. Labiur were the one that took it to the dangerous level.
But anyway that's a side issue. The coalition can't be held responsible for zero hour contracts and you have yet still to state what rights wr have lost due to the coalition.


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## Northerner (Aug 7, 2013)

ypauly said:


> I think not and the reason is simple, they ciuld have deregilated further well before 1997 but didn't. Labiur were the one that took it to the dangerous level.
> But anyway that's a side issue. The coalition can't be held responsible for zero hour contracts and you have yet still to state what rights wr have lost due to the coalition.



I'm not up to having a political argument with you today Paul, you're too good at it


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## ypauly (Aug 7, 2013)

Northerner said:


> I'm not up to having a political argument with you today Paul, you're too good at it



Nor me lol I was curious on what rights I have list as I hadn't heard of any myself.  Oh and obviously to pount out how good the conservatives are


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## ypauly (Aug 7, 2013)

And to show how fat fingers a crap phones don't go well together lol :


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## ypauly (Aug 7, 2013)

This was also being discussed on another forum I visit and this came up. Hopefully they will win.


Sports Direct faces legal challenge...09.article?blocktitle=Latest-News-and-Insight

------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sportswear giant Sports Direct is facing a legal challenge over its widespread use of zero hour contracts.

Law firm Leigh Day, with the support of campaigns group 38 Degrees, is bringing an employment tribunal case against the sportswear retailer to test the legality of its treatment of part-time staff, which are all on the contract.

Former Sports Direct worker and 38 Degrees member Zahera Gabriel-Abraham has brought the legal claim funded by other 38 Degrees members through donations, according to the Press Association.

Leigh Day barrister Elizabeth George is arguing that the contract offers no flexibility to workers as there were no practical differences between the obligations put on Gabriel-Abraham to full-time employees.

38 Degrees said it had a ?huge response? from its members on the issue of zero hour contracts.

Research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development suggested that more than a million UK workers are signed up to the contracts, four times official estimates.

Sports Direct declined to comment.
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## ypauly (Aug 8, 2013)

As you say Alan the opposition should be making mince meat of of the coalition.


http://www.standard.co.uk/news/poli...ntracts-that-ed-miliband-opposes-8752004.html




You couldn't make it up, you really couldn't. Never has the saying that they are all the same been so apt.


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## Northerner (Aug 8, 2013)

ypauly said:


> As you say Alan the opposition should be making mince meat of of the coalition.
> 
> You couldn't make it up, you really couldn't. Never has the saying that they are all the same been so apt.



They're all in it together!


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## ypauly (Aug 8, 2013)

Northerner said:


> They're all in it together!



They most certainly are. Labour allowed millions to come here to work and these people were prepared to do any kind of work in whatever conditions now we as a nation are having to compete at a much lower level than we had become used to. This is why employers have gotten away with these zero hour contracts, because rather than taking care and looking after a good employee they know there are plenty more ready willing and able. As an employee you can't do or say anything about them or it's bye bye.

Ending them wont be easy, and I doubt the coalition would anyway and for 13 years in office labour ignored them despite them growing to massive numbers over that 13 years.


We can hope the legal challenge works but then there would probably be a way around that for the big employers with the big bucks.


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## Caroline (Aug 8, 2013)

These days it is an employers market and whatever we say and do it will make very little difference.


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## megga (Aug 8, 2013)

I would say the goverment (and this is in my eyes) Seem to hate the poor, so much negative rubbish has been said about the unemployed, trying to get us all to agree with them, and the stupid follow " curtain twitchers, still in bed when we go to work, blaa blaa blaa" yep, some are still in bed as some are lazy, some are trying to save on heating bills, and some are people who have lost there jobs and are in deep depression. But if we  class them all as them and us, it helps with our "help the rich" policies.

And as for Labour, well they seem to have forgoten why they became a party

In my oppion we have no good party's now. Posh people hating poor people, idiots getting in bed with the posh one, idiots forgetting why there party was made, Racists.
All we can do is  vote the least of the selfish lying backstabbing, false smileing, EXSPENCE stealing pigs


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## cakemaker (Aug 8, 2013)

Perhaps I shouldn't be joining in this discussion as I live in France but I hope one day to return to England. 

I'm amazed when I return to England by how many 'foreigners' there are now living there. I hear a lot of racist remarks when I return and a lot from both family and friends which I hate. However, I am a 'foreigner' living here so I can Identify with them. It used to be so easy to get a job in England and if you couldn't you could just take a bucket of water and a cloth and wash windows; which is what a lot of thse foreigners do in England; you only have to drive into the car park at Sainsbury in Chichester to see them, so I applaud them for their initiative. You can't blame them for taking advantage of the situation.

It's definitely the fault of my generation; the baby boomers. We had it all and left nothing for the next generation. We had the free education and university grants, the council houses which were disgracefully sold off, abundant employment and proper apprenticeships. 
Many of us now have 2 homes, boats, caravans etc. good pensions (personally we don't being self employed).
My husband often tells the story when he had 3 jobs in one day in the late 60s. He'd been working in a factory in Sunbury -on Thames (when it was Middlesex and NOT Surrey as it is now) to get money to go off to spain for the summer. You could then; work the winter and off you go for 6months, there were always jobs when you got back. He did that for 5 years. No worry about losing jobs or contracts. We both went to Torquay one May bank holiday week-end in the early 70s and stayed until December, came back and found other jobs. We never dreamed it would end like this.
Anyway; I digress. The 3 jobs... him and his mate were working in one factory in the morning, decided to go along the road to another, got a start after lunch, didn't like it so got another at 5pm to start the next day. He always got paid as you did then. You'd go along on Friday and pick your wages up in little brown envelopes.
When we finally 'settled down' he said there was no way he was going to work to make someone else rich so he became a self employed painter and decorater; and a very good one at that.  It was the same when we opened the B&B, we were good at it so a friend asked us to run his hotel near Le Touquet but my husband couldn't work for anyone after years of self employment. 

Anyway, I just despair for this generation. The situation has reversed since my youth. The employers now have the upper hand as it was in the 1930s and taking full advantage. The trouble is now that there won't be any strikes as the unions are virtually powerless and the protesters of my day are old and soft with the fight gone out of them.


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## ypauly (Aug 8, 2013)

Thank you for that insight Cakemaker.


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