jmh

I'm not that keen on zero hours, but am in favour the flexibility of contracting.

Zero hours assumes that you will be readily available for work, which means that you are tied to them and not able to get supplementary work. Contracting, on the other hand, offers much more flexibility to the worker. I work on a contract basis for a company. I am paid a very good hourly rate, and can earn money while running my business and meeting family obligations. I am free to turn down work or to make myself unavailable for work if something crops up. This is a win-win situation for the employer and me. It wouldn't work though if I was not free to find other sources of income, which is the bind that zero hour employees have.

In the old days a company use to use temp agencies to fill gaps, now it seems they are saving the agency fees and going direct to the worker.

TommyLuck

Golden Arches - Zero Hour Contract News.

It's usually one of the big guns that cops it when employment stuff like this is made news worthy.

Although, I would take any story with a pinch of salt but this sort of story perhaps suggests the mental and/or physical problems that can be created in this scenario.

It's not healthy, for one thing.

Parnell

My view is that this will polarise firms into:

- Highly desirable places to work
- Not

Many firms have difficulty securing work teams and this will only get worse as business climate becomes more competitive.

Previous firm for example lost 20% of its key staff (who were doing 80% of its work) leading up to Christmas. Weeks notice given after the Xmas party deliberately excluded contractors (not just this, but prime example of trigger point).

The Friday they sent out the email they were smug in thinking they were saving money for the executive team bonus. Today they are breach of supply contract with key customers with bankruptcy looming, as its not easy to recruit a 9 staff team in a week.

Charismatic

Looks like a lot of employers are backing out of zero hours contracts in hospitality and retail (except for McDonalds for some inexplicable reason). Still I'd back legislation which it looks like is happening.

LauraNotts

Maybe they would work if they could only be offered month by month or something? So that the employer was legally bound to offer regular contracted hours to someone who had been on one and working consistently for a certain period of time.

If that was the case then the person who liked the flexibility could say no to the offer and continue in their flexibility with both employer and employee happy and the person who needed the fixed guarantee of hours could have some security?

As they are I think they're criminally exploitative and wrong.

Charismatic

You can write in a 60 day trial in an employment contract anyway and fire them for any reason.