{"id":10401,"date":"2020-02-28T10:40:25","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T10:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=10401"},"modified":"2026-04-18T19:34:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:34:31","slug":"a-million-on-zero-hours-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2020\/02\/a-million-on-zero-hours-contracts\/","title":{"rendered":"A million on zero-hours contracts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A first glance at the latest\u00a0commentary<\/a>\u00a0from the\u00a0Office for National Statistics<\/a>\u00a0(ONS) on the UK labour market in the last quarter of 2019, and everything looks rosy:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Employment is up 1%, unemployment is down 5.4% on the same period in 2018, and regular average weekly earnings finally exceed the peak earnings before the\u00a0financial crash<\/a>\u00a0of 2008. But is it all really as good as it seems?<\/p>\n

The leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, thinks so \u2013 tweeting about the effect of the \u201cBoris bounce\u201d on wages. But the\u00a0Trades Union Congress<\/a>\u00a0(TUC)\u00a0asserts<\/a>\u00a0that working people have experienced 12 years of lost wages and are facing\u00a0record levels<\/a>\u00a0of work insecurity. If current trends continue, it says, around a million working people will be on\u00a0zero-hours contracts<\/a>\u00a0by the end of this year. The TUC also\u00a0claims<\/a>\u00a0for a political party that has been in power for ten of the 12 years since the financial crash, the current state of the labour market is not something to be proud of.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A zero-hours contract means an employer does not have to offer the employee fixed hours. According to the\u00a0Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service<\/a>\u00a0(ACAS), it is a \u201cflexible\u201d option if work is not constant, or the work can be \u201cas and when\u201d. Under law, an employee has the same rights as a standard employee including the\u00a0national minimum wage<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0holiday pay<\/a>. But the supply of work is very much in the hands of the employer. The flow of employment can be\u00a0cut off<\/a>\u00a0at any time and shifts can be cancelled with very little notice, leading to financial insecurity.<\/p>\n

In a speech at the Labour Party conference in 1995, the then leader of the opposition, Tony Blair,\u00a0highlighted<\/a>\u00a0\u201cthe need to end zero-hours contracts\u201d in his bid to stop part-time workers being treated like \u201csecond-class citizens\u201d. But 20 years later the number of people on zero-hours contracts was almost\u00a0700,000<\/a>\u00a0and growing. Today that figure stands at\u00a0974,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wage growth and zero-hours contracts<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The bad news continues for wage growth as well as the numbers of workers on zero-hours contracts.\u00a0According<\/a>\u00a0to the ONS, \u201cfor the first time since March 2008,\u00a0real regular average weekly earnings<\/a>\u00a0exceeded the highest level reached before the economic downturn\u201d. The real average weekly wage \u2013 which the ONS uses to work out average earnings based on information collected for the\u00a0Monthly Wages and Salaries Survey<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 has increased to \u00a3474. But the highest wage recorded before the 2008 financial downturn was \u00a3473, meaning wages for October to December 2019 have grown just \u00a31 since the spring of 2008.<\/p>\n

The TUC even\u00a0casts doubt<\/a>\u00a0on the idea that wages have returned to pre-recession levels. \u201cReal\u201d wages do consider inflation \u2013 but there are several different methods of measuring it: the\u00a0Consumer Prices Index including occupiers\u2019 housing costs<\/a>(CPIH);\u00a0the Consumer Price Index<\/a>\u00a0(CPI); and the\u00a0Retail Price Index<\/a>\u00a0(RPI).<\/p>\n

The ONS uses CPIH with 2015 as a base year to calculate real wages \u2013 which gives the most favourable reading of wage levels in comparison to March 2008. If CPI is used, wages are \u00a310 per week less than at their peak in 2008 and using RPI it is a staggering \u00a349 lower. The\u00a0Resolution Foundation<\/a>, an independent think-tank which focuses on improving living standards for low and middle earners,\u00a0calculates<\/a>\u00a0that if wages had continued to rise at the rate of 2.1% from 2008 levels \u2013 which was the\u00a0pre-recession average growth rate using CPIH<\/a>, earnings would be \u00a3141 higher per week than they are now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The use of zero-hours contracts has exploded over the past decade. In the figures published by the ONS, just under\u00a0one million working people<\/a>\u00a0are on zero-hours contracts in their \u201cmain job\u201d. That accounts for 3% of employed people in the UK. Although employment figures seem positive in general, to be\u00a0classed as employed<\/a>\u00a0in the UK you need only work just one hour per week.<\/p>\n

httpss:\/\/youtu.be\/Jr0e67WOg_4<\/p>\n

In the latest ONS figures, one-third of people on zero-hours contracts are aged between 16 and 24, and 100,000 more women are working this way than in 2018. This could have\u00a0negative effects<\/a>\u00a0on families and young people early on in their career, including financial insecurity and poor mental health.<\/p>\n

In academia, increasing casualisation of academic work has been cited as a factor in\u00a0a dispute<\/a>\u00a0taking place at universities across the UK. And zero-hours contracts have been\u00a0the trigger<\/a>\u00a0for industrial action in the hospitality sector in recent years.<\/p>\n

Good for business?<\/h2>\n

Zero-hours contracts are often touted by businesses as being flexible for the likes of students, which might be the case for some employees. But similar flexibility can be achieved with part-time contracts, which would provide the employee with job and financial security.<\/p>\n

The Chartered Institute for Personnel Development (CIPD)\u00a0highlights<\/a>\u00a0the importance of providing quality jobs for positive employee well-being. But job quality can also increase workforce productivity, innovation and employee engagement. It can also be linked to reducing absence levels and employee turnover. And, as\u00a0numerous academics<\/a>\u00a0have suggested, job security is a fundamental component of job quality. Zero-hours contracts are not only exploitative but they may also make very little business sense in the long term.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In January 2020, Andy Burnham \u2013 the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester \u2013\u00a0launched<\/a>\u00a0the Good Employment Charter, an informal pledge that commits businesses to paying employees more than the minimum wage and banning the use of zero-hours contracts in Manchester. Burnham said the programme was set up to help lift workers out of\u00a0in-work poverty<\/a>\u00a0and provide secure employment.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which is headed by Burnham, does not have the necessary legal powers to force employers to ditch zero-hours contracts. So the informal pledge remains an agreement which could be reneged on.<\/p>\n

For an outright ban on zero-hours contracts to take place across the UK, legislation would have to be passed at Westminster. In December 2019, a poll showed that two-thirds of voters supported\u00a0banning<\/a>\u00a0them. But the prime minister, Boris Johnson, has not signalled any intent to do so. And with the Conservatives\u2019\u00a080 seat majority<\/a>\u00a0in the House of Commons, much-needed regulation looks unlikely in the near future.<\/p>\n

The UK urgently needs to address the growing casualisation and insecurity that exists in Britain\u2019s labour market \u2013 besides the issue of low wages. It is time for the UK government to honestly confront the darker issues lurking beneath the veneer of \u201cpositive\u201d employment stats and seemingly impressive wage growth.<\/p>\n

First published by The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘The UK urgently needs to address the growing casualisation and insecurity that exists in Britain\u2019s labour market \u2013 besides the issue of low wages.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[319],"tags":[463],"class_list":["post-10401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","tag-unemployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18704,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401\/revisions\/18704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}