They do but you know very well employers are not using zero hours contracts just to deal with seasonal variations.

Employers like McDonalds have no excuse for employing the vast majority of their outlet staff on zero hours contracts and certainly not the excuse of seasonal variations. The McDonalds in Chester and surrounding areas are open 7 days a week and at least one is open 24 hours. It's blindingly obvious they need permanent staff to run these outlets.

If employers behave in this clearly exploitative manner they should expect legislation to be forthcoming to stop it. If that means they lose some flexibility with curbs on zero hours contracts that would be their fault for abusing the system in the first place.

McDonalds won't shut up shop if they were forced into taking staff on permanently just as large corporations won't cease trading here if we closed the tax avoidance loopholes and it ought to be possible to devise legislation to allow seasonal workers such as students to get a temporary job which would suit both parties to cater for seasonal variations.

It's just like the minimum wage. There wouldn't be any need for that if employers would not exploit the fact they could pay next to nothing and it's the same here. If employers were only using zero hours contracts to employ seasonal workers to cover peaks or students looking for a Saturday job there wouldn't be a problem.

Nonsense.
They don't have to be zero-hours contracts, they simply need more hours worked in that rare circumstance, a flexibility easily accommodated in a contract, let's call it .... let me see ... how about occasional overtime?

How do you know if you haven't followed the links? FWIW they mirror what Ed M has had to say about zero hours contracts recently.

So Ed M has spoken. What is Labour's official policy on the matter? Has is been stated categorically bearing in mind that this is apparently (see people's comments above) not an issue that needs to await the next election campaign to see what "the books" look like then. If there is no policy that whatever he has said is soundbite nonsense. If they have a strong policy why aren't they banging the drum now and offering proper opposition to a government who don't see it as an issue? Is it because Ed and Labour are pathetic and scared; dishonest; hypocritical; self-serving; or what?

Truth is that if that were the case then the fall-off in direct employment on zero hours would simply be taken up by Staff Agencies providing bodies on demand to those same companies, matching demand literally on a day to day basis.

And that is not actually such a bad thing as it sounds.

Part of my job involves visiting some of the country's largest agencies and most of the various account managers that I meet and eavesdrop on while in their premises spend most of their day ringing around employees on their books asking them if they are available tomorrow, or even this afternoon, and the pressure for those offices to retain their best and most available employees is high especially in some trades - I've been in an office that specialises in booking HGV drivers into clients and those drivers with certain types of experience can pick and choose which contracts they work on and how many hours they work.

Its an extremely competitive business, probably the most competitive that I have ever been involved with and when demand is high then the most valued employees can start to ask for certain inducements like guaranteed hours etc - certainly more so than if they were tied to just one employer.

Ed M has spoken out against them and Andy Burnham who is in the shadow cabinet has said he'd like them banned. These mirror comments made by those MP's in the links I gave and as I said one of them actually introduced a bill on the subject.

So it seems to me there is pretty uniform agreement from top to bottom in Labour these contracts are not good things.



Rubbish. The idea whenever Ed M voices his opposition to something it has to be backed up by being official Labour policy to carry any weight is ludicrous. The Opposition has every right to pressure the government on the issues of the day without having to set its position down in stone beforehand. That is how our democracy works and is one of the few luxuries of opposition.

Policy in political parties is set after due consideration (with in fact the notable exception of the coalition given the number of u-turns its had to make since coming to office) and if he said the instant this issue hit the headlines "its official Labour policy to ban zero hours contracts" he'd be accused of popularism.

Like it or not this is politics and Labour needs to work out how to deal with zero hours by coming up with sensible legislation that doesn't get them labelled anti-business but at the same time addresses the issue of firms like McDonalds. They aren't going to make this up on the hoof but in the meantime its quite legitimate for them to harangue the government over this issue.

Personally I'd like zero hours contracts banned but the politics unfortunately probably won't let Labour go as far as Burnham would like.



The government as in Vince Cable [ido[/i supposedly see it as an issue. Labour's job is to make sure they see it as a big enough issue and if they come up with any limp wristed excuses as to why they aren't tackling it then Labour can have a go at them. Labour is not in power and so as with all opposition parties must wait and see what the governments hand is. In the meantime voicing strong opposition to zero hours contracts puts pressure on Cable and it doesn't need to be official policy to do that.

Looks like it's going to court!

[urlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/legal-challenge-to-zero-hours-contracts-launched-against-sports-direct-8750104.html[/url

You can support the case. 38degrees are backing it, and asking for £1 Over £10.000 raised so far https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/co ... a#petition

You can support the case. 38degrees are backing it, and asking for £1 Over £10.000 raised so far https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/co ... a#petition

If Cable is involved we can expect swift and forceful supine inaction.

He is the go-to man for all answers on all problems but has never had to test any of his solutions in reality.

I know and that is why Labour should be on the case. The scale of zero hours contracts used by the likes of McDonalds can't be allowed to continue but I'm expecting Cable to end up doing no more than issue a few guidelines which will be studiously ignored by business.

I am also under no illusions as to the complicity of Labour on other issues you might expect them to oppose and for example Liam Byrne ought to just cross the house, admit he's a Tory and go and sit in IDS'S lap. Hopefully some serious arguments as to why zero hours contracts are bad will be put forward by Labour to counter the inevitable "it's bad for business" nonsense.

Agreed.
Also agree with your earlier comparison with the introduction of the minimum wage.

The major problem we are experiencing is while businesses are using zero-hours contracts to reduce their costs and increase their profits, the employees they are screwing over in order to reduce those costs, have no bloody money to spend on anything other than a roof over their heads.

As a service-centred economy, we need consumer stimulus. We must have people spending, they are not, simply because they've got buggerall to spend.

I could probably be persuaded that there is a place for ZHCs in limited circumstnaces but when a national company employs practically the whole of its workforce on ZHCs, and their businesses are staffed for known numbers of hours on an annual basis, and nothing much changes, then it's clear (to me anyway) that ZHCs are nothing more than a device to deprive the employees of what rights they would otherwise have under the normal employment protection that we have strived for so many decades to achieve.

How can anyone seriously argue that having a huge workforce permanently working and operating huge numbers of businesses should still be able to evade all their usual obligations through this device?

If people feel strongly they should simply boycott McD's, Sports Direct, et al. That way they'll change pretty quickly.

If only people gave flip.

Exactly.

What kind of contracts did we used to have for temporary work?

Many moons ago when I was a student I worked one summer at Turner Brothers in Hindley Green near Wigan as a labourer over the long summer break.

I have no idea what sort of contract I was on but I do know I was employed for a full 40 hour week every week I worked there. I wasn't on any kind of contract that said they would call me in when the maintenance fitter needed a bit of help that day.

As an aside when I was at Uni I did a year in industry and was paid a graduate level wage. The way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if current students were expected to do the same for free as an Intern.

Interships, zero hours contracts are out of the same exploitative mould in my opinion.

Will you be leading the charge? Or are you in favour of zero hours contracts?

I am trying. I signed up for at Ethical Consumer and use it to find alternatives to Amazon for example.

I do.
They haven't noticed yet though.

Dally is also trying.
Very.

I'll take a look at Ethical Consumer.

I wasn't wrong, was I?

Perhaps my telepathic skills are nearly as good as yours.

Swerved points - that's rich coming from you!!

So I would expect you to be quite happy to earn less so that all these cleaners so bitch on about can have a little extra money, in fact I would expect you to insist that were the case. You and I both know you will never do that - as long as you have a certain standard of living which is significantly above the average you are happy to bitch about those who have significantly more than you.

Fairer society - yet more clap trap - socialism has been proved to be unworkable, you cannot restrain the human endeavour their will always be a significant % of the population who want more and are prepared to work for it. There will always be individuals who are more gifted in certain areas than others, there will always be certain skills that a society values more than others put the two together and you have an elite - no political system will ever change that. If it did said individuals will simple move to a society where their skills are adequately rewarded.

Society has to be seen to equitable - that doesn't mean fairer.

Congratulations of so comprehensively misunderstanding the term "fairer society". Did Mintball even mention Socialism? Why does any thought of making society (and by extension that includes the economic model) fairer mean a jump to an extreme, ised brand of Socialism or Communism?

A quick question for you, is the UK a Capitalist country?

<Scratches head>

There you go again, straight off to set up a straw man based purely on polarised thinking.

Again, I have to explain to you that disagreeing with neo-liberal laissez-faire capitalism does not necessarily mean dismatling the entire market economy or demanding absolute equality.

Sure, Communism has been cast aside in the Eastern bloc (as distinct from socialism, they are not the same thing) ... but social democracy lives on in European countries ... one of which is the most economically successful European economy, Germany.

There are shades of socialism as there are shades of capitalism ... your clumsy polarised arguments don't work.