Re: Zero hours contracts : Tue Aug 06, 2013 7:55 am  

JerryChicken wrote:

To quote from the deluded womans article ...

A zero hours contract reduces a number of employment provisions; notice periods and unfair dismissal can be avoided. Wages are driven down, pension and sickness benefits are limited....

I think she probably missed a bit out, along the lines of "... and, whilst I obviously wouldn't do it myself, it's great for minions ... "

Re: Zero hours contracts : Tue Aug 06, 2013 8:28 am  

El Barbudo wrote:

I think she probably missed a bit out, along the lines of "... and, whilst I obviously wouldn't do it myself, it's great for minions ... "

Indeed.

[DaveO]

Re: Zero hours contracts : Tue Aug 06, 2013 11:12 am  

Murdoch wrote:

Is it impossible to get accomodation if you work a zero hour contract?

If proof of income is required as it is for renting privately then yes they can't access that accommodation just as they can't get a mortgage. Where do they go then? The answer is obvious, local authority provided accommodation but that assumes they qualify in the first place over people with greater needs for a very small pool of social housing stock. They could be put up in a B&B by the council but that then increases the cost to the local authority so is a further drain on the council tax budget.

My council tax went up continually until recently and has now been frozen for 2/3 years. My income tax has also reduced.

Then you ought to be able to work out something else has got to give which I mentioned in my previous post and alluded to above. The services you get will suffer. Freezing the council tax and taking less in income tax means cuts in services. You may not at this point have had to make use of any of the services affected be they local services or national services such as the NHS but you will one day. You will then probably complain they should be run privately only to find they already are and because they are, cost the councils and government even more from their ever diminishing budgets.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Tue Aug 06, 2013 3:32 pm  

On the child care vouchers, when I've been to a lecture where a tax specialist explained how he and his wife (also works for their company, wink, wink) are using them to help pay for their children's private tuition fees, there's something wrong IMO.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Tue Aug 06, 2013 3:58 pm  

carl_spackler wrote:

On the child care vouchers, when I've been to a lecture where a tax specialist explained how he and his wife (also works for their company, wink, wink) are using them to help pay for their children's private tuition fees, there's something wrong IMO.

This chimes in with what I've been thinking about these vouchers when given to people who can earn up to £150,000 each (so, potentially £300,00 per couple) receiving vouchers at 20% of the total cost, up to a maximum of £1,200 per child p.a.
At that end of the scale, it's a nanny subsidy, not a back-to-work incentive.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Tue Aug 06, 2013 9:29 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

The vacuous Louise Mensch argument.

What you actually don't do is care about anyone but yourself.
You're "fine with that" as long as you don't pay more tax.

The ultimate Tory, happy as long as it doesn't affect you personally.

Unlike all you lefties on here who spout socialist values from your privileged ivory towers on your new mac book!!

Back to topic zero hour contracts are a very poor option, flexible labour is a much more positive way of addressing fluctuation in demand. Casual/agency work is no different, there are no guarantees, not sure why the likes of Mintball is not up in arms about this form of employment?

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 5:24 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Unlike all you lefties on here who spout socialist values from your privileged ivory towers on your new mac book!!

Back to topic zero hour contracts are a very poor option, flexible labour is a much more positive way of addressing fluctuation in demand. Casual/agency work is no different, there are no guarantees, not sure why the likes of Mintball is not up in arms about this form of employment?

Casual or agency work is fundamentally different from zero hours contracts in one significant respect: the casual or agency worker is free to work for other employers or agencies.

I'm old enough to remember dockworkers pre-Devlin Report, when dock work was on a casual basis. Men were selected for a day's work from "The Pen". If they were not among the chosen ones, they didn't work and received no pay. They couldn't simply switch to another employer (there were over 1000 employers) for fear of being blacklisted. Corruption was rife, dockers were expected to pay for the beer of the gangers and foremen, it wasn't unusual for two men to physically fight over one available job for a day. All this happened right up to the mid-1960s, do we want to go back to that kind of savagery?

Zero hours contracts are masking the true state of employment/unemployment/underemployment in the UK. They may be advantageous to a small number of employees but in reality they allow employers to operate a labour force with no responsibility for sick-pay holiday-pay or maternity leave. Leaving business to reap the profits, offshore them to avoid tax and the taxpayer to pick up the slack.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 5:35 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Unlike all you lefties on here who spout socialist values from your privileged ivory towers on your new mac book!!

One day you might attempt to engage with issues instead of simply flinging around old labels, which suggest that you don't really understand the current state of affairs in "the real world".

Sal Paradise wrote:

Back to topic zero hour contracts are a very poor option, flexible labour is a much more positive way of addressing fluctuation in demand. Casual/agency work is no different, there are no guarantees, not sure why the likes of Mintball is not up in arms about this form of employment?

Because the two things are not one and the same.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 5:40 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Back to topic zero hour contracts are a very poor option, flexible labour is a much more positive way of addressing fluctuation in demand. Casual/agency work is no different, there are no guarantees, not sure why the likes of Mintball is not up in arms about this form of employment?

I see flexible labour contracts in operation on every day of my working week in the various supermarkets that we deal with - while they use agencies and have no control over what contracts apply there (or more likely don't want to ask), in the main for their own staff they operate the 5/7 or 4/7 type shift regime where an employee has a guarantee of work and of their hours each week - a normal working contract in other words, the days of work can be switched at will but the hours are available and the shifts are part of the contract of employment.

That is flexible labour, not zero hour no commitment employers.


BTW, since last November my shift pattern, including standby weekend, has been 12/14, hence the reason why I have a massive backlog of holiday days to book before the end of the year, which probably won't be approved

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 5:54 am  

JerryChicken wrote:

I see flexible labour contracts in operation on every day of my working week in the various supermarkets that we deal with - while they use agencies and have no control over what contracts apply there (or more likely don't want to ask), in the main for their own staff they operate the 5/7 or 4/7 type shift regime where an employee has a guarantee of work and of their hours each week - a normal working contract in other words, the days of work can be switched at will but the hours are available and the shifts are part of the contract of employment.

That is flexible labour, not zero hour no commitment employers.


BTW, since last November my shift pattern, including standby weekend, has been 12/14, hence the reason why I have a massive backlog of holiday days to book before the end of the year, which probably won't be approved

A sizeable number of employers operate flexible working, usually with trade union approval Honda have managed it for years in the UK. During lulls in demand, workers would be sent home, often for a whole week at a time. then when demand increased once more, those workers would work extra hours each day or at weekends until the "free time" had been repaid. Similarly, workers could also accrue "free hours" to be taken at a later date. Since I stopped truck driving, every contract of employment I signed included a clause covering "contracted hours" and "a reasonable amount of overtime may be expected to be worked for no extra payment"

As you say, that's what flexible working is about