The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 19th April 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 19th April 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
In April 1918 the Work Foundation (WF) was founded as the Boys Welfare Association by an East London based cleric at a time when the British ruling classes realised they would have to take an interest in working class welfare in case they copied the Russian example.
The founding cleric thought that benign employers who provided luxuries such as canteens and toilets could get as much work out of their employees as slave drivers.
Soon changing its name to the Industrial Society (IS), it won royal support to promote class collaboration between bosses and workers. Later, one of its functions was to promote the possibility of careers in industry among university students who would not otherwise consider such options. This correspondent has clear memories of an IS organised tour of a steel works and hazier memories of a visit to a brewery.
After a period of mismanagement the Foundation drastically reduced its employees and it is now part of Lancaster University and maintains its original objective now using trendier language to promote the idea that: “good quality jobs lead to higher productivity, improved quality of working life, improved employee engagement and better workplace health and well-being”. A cynic might think that it is worried that it is bad for bosses to have sick workers as that means they have to pay out sick pay.
Some of the leading lights in the Foundation give that impression. One is Gavin Barwell, a former Tory MP who served as Chief of Staff to Theresa May, Others include Alan Milburn, the Health Minister under Tony Blair who did much to privatise the NHS and Marvin Rees, the elected Mayor of Bristol who was such a success in that post the citizenry voted to abolish it.
Zero Hours
Such is the background to the publishers, last month of Zero Choices: Swapping Zero-Hour Contracts for Secure Flexible Working. The WF has noticed that there are 6.8 million people in “severely insecure work in the UK” of which 1.1 million or 3.4 per cent of the workforce are on zero-hour contracts.
It has also just discovered that zero-hour contracts mean that workers have very few rights and that they do not offer any real flexibility to workers, something many trade unions have been saying for years.
Numbers on zero-hours contracts have increased from 700,000 in 2015 to the present figure of 1.1 million. The worst offender is the hospitality sector where 18.8 per cent are in insecure work, arts, entertainment and leisure comes second with 8.7 per cent, administration and support with 5.1 per cent, health and social care 4.4 per cent, and transport and storage on 3.7 per cent.
The theatrical union, Equity, say that zero-hour jobs in restaurants, bars and with leisure providers are frequently taken up by their members to supplement their main careers in arts and performance. This means that such workers will not put much effort into fighting for improved conditions if they regard it as a temporary measure before they get their name in bright lights. However many more depend on the hospitality industry as the sole source of income, which ought to be a priority issue for their unions.
Predictably Black workers are 2.7 times more likely than white workers to be on zero-hour contracts: 3.1 per cent of White workers are on zero-hour contracts while 7.3 per cent of Black, African and Caribbean are on them with other ethnic minorities in between. Figures from the TUC show the number of BME workers in insecure jobs more than doubled from 2011 to 2022 from 360,200 to 836,300.
Young workers aged between 16 and 24 are 5.9 times more likely to be on zero-hour contracts than older workers. WF stresses it is not just students fitting work around their studies. Young workers who are not students are 3.6 times more likely than other age groups to be on zero-hour contracts. The percentage of students who take jobs who are on zero-hour contracts is 27 per cent. The lack of support for students means that work is not a case of extra money for a holiday, but for food and rent for student digs.
Of the 136,000 more workers who were on zero-hours contracts in 2023 compared to 2022, 65 per cent went to those aged 16 to 24 year-olds, this amounts to 10 per cent of jobs in that age group, and they were not only students, obviously a much higher percentage than for older workers.
Alice Martin, the WF’s Head of Research firmly declared that the choice about zero-hour contracts is one made by bosses, not workers: “While they may provide ad-hoc flexibility for a small minority of professionals who actively choose this way of working, our analysis suggests that for the vast majority, these contracts represent precarity”.
She warns that starting off in insecure work will have long term impacts as it will make getting a foot on the housing ladder even more difficult.
An Unlikely Hero
WF has found an unlikely hero among employers: the JD Wetherspoon pub chain who are applauded for having introduced in 2016 an option for guaranteed hours for its 43,000 workforce. This has been taken up by 99 per cent of the workforce with only the remaining one per cent wanting zero hours, a point which refutes claims from such as Deliveroo and Uber who claim zero hours contracts are popular.
Rival chain Whitbread claim the company “does not do zero-hour contracts” but offers contracts ranging from 10 hours upwards weekly. This might be simply a way round zero-hours as the hours offered are so low. But the slave-driving MacDonalds’ chain say that when they offered employees the chance to move from zero-hours to fixed contracts only a fifth took up the offer, but it is clear that the “choice” was not all it seemed.
The WF deplores the unsurprising lack of urgency of the Tory Government to do anything about the matter. It wants legislation for guaranteed hours in the form of guaranteed contractual hours for all roles from day one. This could mean fixed hours per week, or on-call work and other roles with periods of varying demand, as so many hours per month or annualised hours. How much better such arrangements are is a matter of debate, but they look better than nothing.
The WF also wants workers to have a right to flexible working, amended contracts for those working 25 per cent more than their contracted hours that reflects their actual hours. Workers should get a statutory notice period of changes to shifts with the right to compensation for a cancelled shift.
There should be annual reporting on employment data with employers with a workforce of 250 or more to report on key employment data about contracts, to enable better official monitoring of contracts. Compiling statistics does not necessarily solve a problem if there is no interest in it.
Finally the Government should increase funding for labour market enforcement resourcing. This is a somewhat pious hope. The past decades have seen severe cuts to the Health & Safety Executive and fees levied on workers taking bosses to court. While Tory Governments have repeatedly denounced zero-hours contracts as a bad thing, they do nothing in practice to stop it.
Solutions or Not?
In 2014, the Zero-hour Contracts Bill, a Private Members’ Bill sponsored by Gateshead Labour MP Ian Mearns, which sought to limit the use of zero-hour contracts was introduced to the Commons but talked out by Tory MPs. A 2018 Good Work Plan based on recommendations accepted by the Government similarly came to nothing. The only recent measure to improve the lot of zero-hour workers was the 2015, Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act, which forbids employers from stopping zero-hour workers from working for another employer. It later expanded the scope of the ban to all low wage workers.
Banning zero-hours contracts is very popular even among voters who grumble about train strikes. Even Labour’s New Deal for Working People includes a pledge to ban zero-hour contracts. But that need not be taken too seriously as readers are well aware that Sir Keir Starmer is in the habit of abandoning any remotely progressive policy. Sunday’s declaration by Marks & Spencer supremo Archie Norman that the UK has “some of the best employers, terms and practices in the world” while opposing plans to crack down on zero-hours or give workers rights from day one are more likely to be heeded by Sir “Keith” than any polite pleadings from the TUC.
The WF hopes to see bosses settling down to setting up Secure Work Taskforces with representatives of employers, trade unions: “to pilot alternative models such as digital self-rostering and bank systems, and negotiated sectoral standards for pay and hours”.
It is clear that zero hours contracts are increasing to unsurpassed levels. While zero-hour staff who are employed as workers and are not phoney “self-employed” they are not protected from redundancy or unfair dismissal. What modest legal protection they have is often only on paper. Asking for a rise generally results in being shown the door.
The insecurity of zero-hour contracts makes it virtually impossible to accrue the two years of continuous service needed for entitlement to important employment rights such as protection from unfair dismissal. Just one week without work can constitute a break in employment meaning the clock counting someone’s continuous service. Sacking people for minor or imagined offences is very common to keep people on tenterhooks.
Another side-effect of zero-hours contracts is that irregular income makes it difficult to claim essential benefits. Claiming from the DWP is never easy at the best of times, and a comparatively good week can see the withdrawal of a much needed top up. Irregular work means child care and transport costs can be higher, comparatively economical season tickets are pointless when it is uncertain whether they will be used regularly.
The physical and mental health problems caused by uncertainty are too well known to be repeated here. While workers can adjust to night shifts, over a period being called out to work at 10am one day and 10pm the next reduces people to nervous wrecks.
In February another report by the Trades Union Congress noted that zero-hours contracts are not temporary but are becoming the norm. Two thirds of workers on them had been on them for over a year, 46 per cent for more than two years and 12 per cent for a decade or more. This was because they were the only jobs going.
The TUC places a childish faith in Labour’s New Deal. However it is clear that trade unions, particularly the big three, Unite, GMB, Unison need to be much more active. Taking more action on this question could solve the problem of low union membership among young people in precarious employment who can only turn to independent street unions for help and assistance these days.