Call for ban on zero-hours contracts
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Responding to the government’s plan to force unemployed people on to zero-hours contracts, Left Unity is calling for a ban on the controversial contracts.
Bianca Todd of Left Unity said:
“On a zero-hours contract, workers face the uncertainty of getting up every morning, not knowing whether or not they will be called in to work.
“How are people supposed to live when they have no income they can rely on? This plan would push people off benefits into complete insecurity and indignity.
“Labour says it will outlaw zero-hours contracts ‘where they exploit people’ – but the whole point of them is to exploit people. We call for a total ban on zero-hours contracts.”
For more information contact press@leftunity.org
Notes to editors
1. Left Unity is the new party of the left in Britain. Founded in November 2013, it already has over 1,900 members and 50 branches across the country.
2. The new party is standing its first candidates in the May 2014 local elections, in Wigan, Norwich, Bolton, Exeter and Barnet in north London.
5 comments
5 responses to “Call for ban on zero-hours contracts”
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My friend was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and because she was on a zero hours contract with a leading supermarket she ended up with no money at all for weeks on end whilst she was operated on and had treatment.
What sort of country allows that to happen to its workforce?
the only way zero hour contracts will work fairly is if the worker is paid a retainer fee. if you are not called to work on any particular day you get paid your retainer fee. if you are called to work you get paid your wages, but no retainer fee.
problems could arise if the retainer fee is set at for example 60-70%of a days wages (which in my view would be fair enough) and the worker gets called in for 2 hours work. in that case the retainer fee should be paid as it would be more than the wages for 2 hours work. Even though the retainer fee does not provide a “wage” as such it would certainly be better than the nothing on offer today and would offer a steady source of income – although it would have to be carefully calculated and balanced against potential cuts in benefits.As we have seen any excuse will do to cut benefits.
The zero hour contracts system is exactly the same as that which operated when building site workers or dockers were told to gather at a meeting place and the boss came along and said “You, you and you have got work today. The rest of you can go home.”
My daughter worked for an agency (as a teaching assistant) in such a system for a while. She had to be up every morning at seven to wait for a phone call. She was not allowed to call the agency to find out if they had anything for her. She just had to sit and wait – exactly as the dockers did in the old days. She was not given a time at which she could consider it safe to go and do something else. It is an iniquitous practice which should be outlawed but which bullying thugs like Boris Johnson think is a great idea. The Labour Party, in this as in everything else, are a bunch of gutless lillywhites. All power to Left Unity, but in reality we know they will not get a single seat. Shame on the Labour Party. Where are we to go now?
david i agree with you totally – zero hours contracts are the old shake-down.
Having said that if they can’t be abolished the only alternative is the “retainer fee” or whatever you want to call it, as i wrote above
There is an interesting potential disaster awaiting as Universal Credit and Zero hours contracts are completely incompatible. Ian Duncan Smith’s ‘flagship’ UB policy has been sent back to the drawing board having already wasted £25 million of our money on failed technology. The Labour Party should ditch both things in principle before they have to in practice.