Zero Hours Contracts - A Bet With The Devil

Some friends of mine (hard to believe, right) are having a bit of difficulty with an employer. Basically, they work in the service sector and they're stuck on a crappy zero-hours contract.

ZHCs look like they're excellent for employers, but thoroughly crap for employees. For the employer, they can call people in at the drop of a hat, "responding to demand" (lame) and minimising their contractual risk. It means you don't have to give people hours, basically, when there's no demand to do so.

This is a bit of an anti-capitalist whine, but seriously, this is pretty crap. If you're on a ZHC, you've basically got no job security. You don't know from one week to the next if you're going to have any hours. This means you don't know from one week to the next whether you'll be able to pay your bills. I've never been in the unfortunate position of having to rely on such contracts, but I imagine this is pretty stressful.

It's fine for people in some walks of life, such as students earning a bit of extra spending money, teenagers living at home still or any number of other lifestyles, but for serious grown-ups, it's a kick in the teeth to continually offer ZHCs as a viable contract of employment. The government should sit up and take notice, because this practice is on the rise - I'm sure a lot of those recently entering part-time employment are massively underemployed, especially in the cohort of young workers.

There are other, more sinister effects. Let's say you have a bit of a problem with your employer - harassment, health and safety, working conditions, or just asking for extra hours - and your employer takes a dislike to this. They can reduce your hours or completely cut them, completely within the remit of your contract. Or say you wanted to join a trade union and fight your corner. Again, your employer can turn around and say, "hey, sorry pal, I don't need you to come in this week." It's a redundancy by any other name, and it's creepy.

So not only can the employer lay you off in lull periods, but they're also going to have your undying support for changes in working conditions, poor health and safety practices, unfair harassment or dismissal charges and generally having a crap job, because if you don't tow the company line, you're not going to get any hours.

There's also some other minor issues, such as some employers demanding that their employees are "faithful" - i.e. they can only retain one ZHC at any one time. This sucks - you can't even have a bet with three devils. Oh sure, there're promises of "layover time payment" if you're kicking around waiting for a shift to start, but I don't see any reason for these ever existing in the more-or-less predictable world of consumer retail.

Some politicians in the UK have been discussing how such contracts can be abolished, but this is likely to be a long-term process. The outcome might very well be worse - very low hours contracts, for example, or general lay-offs as companies consolidate their list of employees. Our best hope is that a general code of conduct, with some kind of viable monitoring scheme, can be implemented by retailers.

I'd like to know in the mean-time whether there's anything I can recommend to my friends. Does anyone have any experience in fighting ZHCs? Is joining a trade union a viable solution? Or must they just grit their teeth, hunker down and weather the storm of craposity?