Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 6:02 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?

I did temping and thoroughly enjoyed it. The difference is I had a mortgage to pay and only accepted temping work that was for more than a week at a time instead of a day here, a day off there which is how zero hours could work out at. I also made sure when an assignment was coming to an end, I had something lined up for the following day/week, by which ever agency. (I was registered with a few). Temping is also a way into permanent work.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 7:43 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

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

As it happens, I don't own anything made by Apple.
But that's not really the issue ... you too are using the Louise Mensch argument, when she sweepingly included anyone who bought a coffee at Starbucks as "buying into everything capitalism provides" whilst at the same time protesting in St Paul's Churchyard as being hypocritical.
That's what we call polarised thinking, Sal.

If someone says that they are opposed to some issue of the capitalist world, they are (in your view, it seems) automatically a raving communist.
It doesn't work like that, there's a whole range of positions between the two extremes, and objecting to aspects of laissez-faire neoliberal economics does not make one a Stalinist.

Just to demonstrate the utter vacuousness of polarised thinking .. do you own anything made in China? ... it is, after all, still a Communist country and has built-up enormous reserves that unbalance the world's markets and balance of payments.
Surely a committed laissez-faire capitalist like you wouldn't buy into that?

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?

If I may apply your style of polarisation to that comment, do you think, therefore, that everyone should be on zero-hours contracts ... and, if not, why not?
By the way, agency work varies quite widely, I personally worked as a self-employed contractor for 15 years, never once on a zero-hours contract, the contracts always included agreed likely length of contract, notice periods, hours per week, times of hours etc etc.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 8:05 am  

McDonalds has "82,800 contracted staff not guaranteed work or a stable income." They're lovin' it? I doubt it.

McDonalds has "82,800 contracted staff not guaranteed work or a stable income." They're lovin' it? I doubt it.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 8:42 am  

“The zero-hours contracts which all our hourly-paid employees are on do not affect employee benefit entitlement and all of our employees are entitled to a range of benefits including life assurance, employee discounts and access to a range of training and qualifications.”

No mention of sick pay, holidays, notice period, protection from unfair dismissal etc etc.
It could just a bad PR release but, basically, no mention of ANY employment rights at all.

[DaveO]

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 10:31 am  

El Barbudo wrote:

“The zero-hours contracts which all our hourly-paid employees are on do not affect employee benefit entitlement and all of our employees are entitled to a range of benefits including life assurance, employee discounts and access to a range of training and qualifications.”

No mention of sick pay, holidays, notice period, protection from unfair dismissal etc etc.
It could just a bad PR release but, basically, no mention of ANY employment rights at all.

I am sure its quite deliberate.

You'd think McDonalds managements reliance on zero hours contracts was possibly because they are just too incompetent to work out a staff rota for a business that must have a pretty predictable level of demand. It should be pretty easy for them to work out a base level of demand in each outlet, employ a core number of permanent staff to cover it and then employ temporary staff to cover any seasonal peaks.

However I doubt they are at all remotely incompetent and have worked out it is simply more profitable to employ staff on zero hours precisely because they don't have to provide sick pay, holiday pay or redundancy pay. They can also probably pay less per hour as well. A permanent employee would no doubt be looking for jobs paying more then the minimum wage whereas someone desperate for a few hours beholden to their employer will work for less.

It's not flexibility the likes of McDondald's and the IOD champion zero hours contracts for. It's because they cost less and result in larger profits at least in the short term (as usual ignoring long term planning and ignoring the benefits of a stable and contented workforce). It is just another expression of maximising shareholder return and hang the consequences. It's also a fine illustration of what unregulated capitalism leads to. Pretty much in the same way large companies have worked out they can avoid corporation tax this is just another wheeze dreamt up in the same vein to allow companies to dodge their financial and moral obligations.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 10:44 am  

I read that the EU was peed off at US corporations attempting to import US labour practises into the EU. High time Brussels told them (and all EU employers): you want to operate in the EU? You play by EU laws or not at all.

Brussels could then issue a warning to all member countries: Sort out the problem with zero-hours contracts or we'll do it for you.

That should get things stirred up

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 10:55 am  

cod'ead wrote:

I read that the EU was peed off at US corporations attempting to import US labour practises into the EU. High time Brussels told them (and all EU employers): you want to operate in the EU? You play by EU laws or not at all.

Which is the big spanner in the works of idiots like UKIP when they think we can opt out of the EU and its work related laws, be cheaper and then be allowed to undercut countries in the EU who have to abide by the regulations.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 12:31 pm  

Where are the Labour Party in all this? More or less silent. This is the sort of thing the Labour Party was founded to fight against. These days they are pathetic.

Where is the narrative to counteract the villification of the poor and disabled "scroungers"? What I'd be doing is runnning a hard-hitting TV campaign contrasting decent poor / disabled people struggling to survive on a few quid a week with arrogant teenage public school boys at Eton or similar - all dressed up and sneering at the oiks (would easy be able to get candid footage). Then I'd point out the amount of taxpayer the scroungers get at many public schools by virtue of charitable status (in some cases granted centruries ago when they were for the benefit of the poor). I'd then go onto to say we need a modern, competitive labour force to win in the global race and that currently Boards of many companies and national institutions are made up primarily of public school eduated types. I would point out that in any competitive field of endeavour (eg football) those types no longer dominate and that the "sense of entitlement" of these people (including many expense fiddlers in Westmimster, fat cat bankers, etc) are holding our great nation back. The only way to compete in the global race will be to create a new type of leader - one fit for the 21st century and not one based on their parents' ability to pay for privilege. With this in mind, for the sake of the nation, we will need regrettably to close all public schools and convert them to community hospitals for the benefit of the all and also perhaps remove access to inherited wealth. That way each new generation would be hungry and competitive in the great global race.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 12:39 pm  

As I keep saying part of the reason why zero hours or short-hour contracts have come about is due to the stealth tax of employers NI - Labour had a part in whacking that up. Much better, IMO< to abolish it and increase corporation tax to comepenstate. That way companies would have a greater incentive to emplo people full-time and securely, the big, profitable corporations would get tax relief on the wages anyway and marginally profitable companies would be able to employ people without the 13.5% additional costs of so doing. What stops this? Politicians - massaging the employment figures in effect.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 07, 2013 12:43 pm  

Dally wrote:

As I keep saying part of the reason why zero hours or short-hour contracts have come about is due to the stealth tax of employers NI - Labour had a part in whacking that up. Much better, IMO< to abolish it and increase corporation tax to comepenstate. That way companies would have a greater incentive to emplo people full-time and securely, the big, profitable corporations would get tax relief on the wages anyway and marginally profitable companies would be able to employ people without the 13.5% additional costs of so doing. What stops this? Politicians - massaging the employment figures in effect.

There is nothing stealthy about employers NI, the information is widely available, employers NI should taper upwards rather than there being a fixed starting point, that only encourages employers to use part time workers to fulfill what should be full time roles.

Corporation tax is avoidable, see Google, Dell, Tesco and many others for details.