‘All the power is with the employer’: why zero-hours workers welcome Labour’s rights bill | Zero-hours contracts

WHen Seamus Foley found a zero -hour contract in a table games bar in London two years ago, and his flexibility was attractive. Now, such a bad deal is ready to strike.

“Tiring. You live your life all the time,” he says DraftsStratford and Waterloo have rods. There, workers who are tired of last -minute route changes and lack of basic protection staging the industrial action.

“All power seems to be in the hands of the employer. [the contract] It is designed to keep you desperate, hungry and vague about how your two weeks look next week or two weeks. ”

Approximately 1.2 million workers in the UK are in zero -hour contracts. Despite the preparations made by the Keir Starmer government to prohibit the use of exploitative arrangements, a key promise of a key manifesto has swollen zero -hour rankings since Labour’s election victory More than 100,000 close to the record level.

Among the big employers with hundreds of thousands of zero -clock staff are McDonald’s, Burger King, Dominos and Mike Ashley’s Frasers group, and contracts are still used in social care, hospitality and logistics.

Workers’ rights have been a long-standing war between government and employers.

The Lords will be released after the ministers and the conservative and liberal democratic peers after making a change in recent days to limit the bill to a great extent before writing.

Business Minister Justin Madders said the Worker will face critics. “We have a democratic duty to introduce this invoice and measures. Our starting point, we will continue with it. We will see where we come from. [with the Lords]But I don’t think we’ll want to return again because of what’s on our manifesto. “

Business Groups, Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ employer’s national insurance contributions (NICS) £ 25 billion and the increase in the “national life fee” increase from April, the recruitment cost of the recruitment costs after April.

Companies, the UK economy is weak and the labor market cooling at the same time too much changes, he says. Partly unemployment increased due to Reeves’s tax increases. Businesses say that adding their costs further will increase unemployment by emphasizing a price tag of 5 billion pounds for the workers’ rights policy in their own impact assessment.

Deputy Director of Public Policy in British Chambers of Commerce Jane Gratton said: iz You will see that the labor market is loosened. If you will see that employing people is more difficult and expensive. It will affect people’s opportunities.

The Federation of Small Enterprises found that 67% of small companies would receive less personnel. Companies also say zero -hour workers, especially the flexibility offered by contracts, including students.

“These measures will only connect businesses on nodes and have real negative effects such as stopping the shifts on workers. The policy construction shows what is going wrong when there is such an untouched approach, Tak

Some lobbyists believe that the likelihood of the Labor Party to withstand workers’ rights is more than tax and expenditures before a difficult autumn budget. Unlike an expensive and embarrassing U -turn in the employer’s NICs, any change would be financially neutral and would sit well with Reeves’s wider deregulator agenda.

However, the party says that this will underestimate Reeves and Starmer’s commitment to stronger workers’ rights. Since both have come to power, many basic workers have disappointed voters under the pressure of being attached to politics.

The chief advocate of the bill, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, said that the government wanted to work closely with the enterprises to make details of the invoice work, including a consultation on the prohibition of zero -time this autumn, but the changes are vital after years of exploitation.

“Zero-hour contracts leave a lot of people without the security they deserve-they work hard, but shifts are waiting, not sure what their salaries will happen. We are heading head.”

In accordance with Labour’s planned changes, zero -hour employees will have the right to make a guaranteed hourly contract reflecting their hours during a 12 -week reference period. This comes with other measures, including one day protection against unfair dismissal.

In order to overcome business concerns about the width of policy changes, the government plans to gradually introduce every step and the prohibition of zero -hour contracts continued at the end of 2027.

However, the critics on the left of Labor say that it is a glacier change, and warn that continuous use of zero -hour contracts does not constitute a prohibition and leave much power in the hands of bad bosses.

Madders, while trying to establish a balance that realizes how the Labor Party appreciates the elasticity of some workers, said to overthrow the balance that forced bad employers to stay under these conditions against their will.

“What we do is actually find a very sweet place where people who want some certainty and security in the workplace can have it.

Official figures show that 60% of zero -hour employees do not want more hours. Approximately one quarter is in full -time education and more than half are under 35 years of age. For other workers, those who are involved in the contracts operate 19 hours compared to 32 hours. 10% of zero -hour workers have been making such an arrangement with their employers for more than 10 years.

Working conditions have long been the early wounded of economic conditions drowned in the UK. Zero -hour contracts, after the 2008 financial crisis, employers are looking for a way to increase their labor capacity flexibly to meet the consumer demand that gradually return to consumer demand.

Mike Ashley, a billionaire king of retail, has become a target for the public’s anger in the use of contracts, direct chain, contracts and wider employment practices, and a preventive investigation found that the workers in the main warehouse in Derbrook, Derbrook have received an effective hourly payment rate below the minimum wage.

As contracts became synonymous with workers’ exploitation, some firms dropped them, including the JD Wetherspoon Pub chain. McDonald’s took action to allow workers to select a hourly contract with a warranty. However, approximately 90% of McDonald’s 135,000 UK staff are still zero -hour and encountered a fast food chain Charges of harassment and sexual assault by managers. McDonald’s did not respond to the request.

Unions say that warnings on the hit market are similar to the same arguments, which were used against labor in the 1990s and brought the minimum wage that was shown to be wrong. They emphasize that strengthening workers’ rights is a vote -supported vote that is supported by most voters, and the key to increasing labor productivity is the key to more occupational safety.

Tim Sharp, Head of Employment Rights in Tuc, said: “We have done this long experiment with zero -time and other precarious contract forms. There is no incentive for employers to train and improve their workers, and we pay the economic price for it.”

However, the analysis by the resolution Foundation suggests that the changes will neither have a major negative impact nor have a great positive effect. Even if the government costs £ 5 billion for businesses, it will be equal to only 11,000 job losses.

He said: “This small – to reduce the employment rate by only 0.02% – in the context of changes that will provide new protection to millions of workers.”

For his striking colleagues on the pile line in Foley and drafts, efforts to negotiate guaranteed hourly contracts have been in a dead end. “It seems like something they don’t want to entertain so far,” he said.

For the first time, the bar worker, represented by the Union of World Union, took industrial action for the first time. He said that the executives of the drafts were trying to assure the personnel to be treated fairly regardless of their contracts, but this was very little. “You cannot make an oral agreement. Ultimately, if we do not have anything about our contracts, we cannot force it when violated.”

“I don’t feel like we’ve reacted to us without a plate.” The drafts did not respond to the request for comments.

Although employers are afraid that they can still “play the system” under Labour’s suggestions, Foley said that the changes can still be very attractive. “It would be better than we have right now,” he said.