"What are zero hours contracts?" asked someone at
the Northampton Borough Council Diverse Communities Forum.
Despite the media storm over the past couple of days, it
still seem that people don't necessarily notice how badly exploited those
desperate for work can get.
Where I work zero hours contracts have been an issue to
giving advice on discrimination for the past four years or so. In the past if a
company offered work but said that they couldn't commit to how many hours they
could give, applicants would perhaps take the role but look for something a lot
better pretty quick. With little availability of fixed hours for people with
little skills or little experience in particular in retail, service and logistics
zero hours contracts are the only option for many. For those on benefits it
presents a descent into revising and re-revising claims that can take weeks to
process leaving a trail of debts and payday loans along the way. It offers no
security and presents a situation where employees are hanging on a string.
My daughter worked for Sport Direct on a zero hours contract
last year. Assigned a 6am to 10am shift, she was often asked to stay until 4pm
or 6pm at in the evening. People feel obliged to say yes because they fear the
work drying up. This will always place people with caring responsibilities or
those disabled people who need more flexible working environments for them at a
disadvantage.
Most crucially, zero hours contracts can hide a multitude of
poor employer behaviour. A few weeks ago Magda and her husband Chris came into
the office. Magda worked for a company that provided cleaner for local hotels.
When Magda applied for and got her job, both she and Chris were pleased that it
wasn't agency work and that it came with a written contract. Magda had a
history of ill health and so had asked for lighter duties as reasonable
adjustment which her manager agreed to. Every week Magda would get a call
advising her of the shifts that she should undertake. Although lighter duties
were given in the first few weeks, after a while Magda found herself being
asked to do more and more heavy work, until one day she fell ill after her
shift. She was taken to hospital where she was told that she had suffered a
miscarriage. Although, she didn't know that she was pregnant this came as a big
emotional blow to Magda and Chris. Chris called her manager and told him what
had happened and re-stated his wife's need for light duties. It was agreed that
Madga should be assigned to a different hotel where this was possible. She was
working with a new team and after a few days another member of staff came into
a room where she was cleaning and said that the rest of the team had noticed
that she was only being given light duties and felt that she was being treated
this way because she was Ukrainian. The woman that said this to Magda was White
British and she said that the other team members would be setting up a campaign
to get her out. Magda went into another room and called her manager who told
her not to worry and that he would sort it out. Magda left her shift that day
upset about what had happened. Then suddenly, she no longer received calls
advising her of the hours to work. When Magda asked her manager about this he
just advised that there was no more work for her. Magda and Chris came to Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council
for advice and brought in the Magda's contract. They read thorough the contract
and said, that surely something could be done as it didn't state that it was a
zero hours contract. However since it didn't state any hour in the contract
there was not obligation for her employer to give her hours given that she was
not given the same consistent number of hours over a period of time.
It's clear in this situation and in many others that we have
seen that zero hours contracts is a key safeguard to employer who either wish
to discriminate or support others who discriminate as happened with Magda.
Magda and Chris's names have been changed to protect their
confidentiality.
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