The stats used to justify an increase in wages are completely misleading, as casuals do earn more. However the above stats fail to include the fact that casuals earn more per hour, but may only work one or two days per week. Also casuals get no sick leave or annual leave entitlements. All this and then we have to consider the social impact of casual work. Being asked to do a shift at a moments notice, doing shifts at un-godly hours and not knowing when your next shift is coming from. Oh yes please, where do I get to sign a zero hours contract?
NWND, am I being partisan? Of course I am and so are you. Just saying that you are non-partisan, doesn't mean you are. People analyse your position and see it equates to a hard right agenda. Sorry if that offends, personally I'm proud of my political beliefs and fail to understand why you are ashamed to admit yours. (Actually I do know why you refuse to acknowledge them. It's one of the oldest propaganda tricks in politics.)
I say all this as a disgruntled former Tory voter and member (Thaxted North branch). Never again will they get my vote!
I think you're confusing two issues. I didn't post the ONS headline stats as a justification of my point on zero-hours contracts. Someone else posted someone in response to my post, about falling wages in the 1980's being used by credit companies to keep the proles in check. I'm pretty sure that was the jist of it.
Anyway, you asked me to respond to the point of falling wages over the years creating a demand vacuum that has been filled by cheap credit. My point was that wages have not fallen.
Returning to your attack on zero-hours contracts, I feel like i'm banging my head against a brick wall here. What social impact does casual work have? Casuals get no sick leave and annual leave entitlements? I'm not sure what your point is, this is not slave labour. The people on these contracts haven't been rounded up by a gang of red-coats and put on a ship to Jamaica to work on a sugar plantation.
I worked on a zero-hour contract while i was at uni. I had zero hours, it was door-to-door sales. What i did was, i'd ring up the company when i wanted work and said, what have you got for me this week, they'd tell me what they had in stock. I'd go and collect it and then take it to shops to pitch it to them. I got paid a percentage of what I sold plus expenses. It was flexible for me and meant if i needed money i could get it, fast. They didn't have the overheads associated with a permanent employee.
Yeah, if I was ill, I didn't get paid, but so what? I knew what I was getting into. It was all set out in black-and-white for me before I signed up. And you know what? If I found that I didn't like doing it anymore, or wanted more security, I could look for something else and leave, which is what I did.
You say, "where do I get to sign a zero hours contract?" Well if you want one, you can find one, if you don't, then don't bother. If you sign one because there's nothing else available and you need SOME source of income while you try to find something better, remember two things:
*It's still a choice, not exploitative slave labour, they advertised it, you applied and signed, they didn't press-gang you into it;
*Do you think if they're banned that this source of income would be replaced with a better, more permanent one, or would it just cease to exist completely?
You claim that zero hours contracts mean working ungodly hours - since when? Some might, but then you could sign up for a permanent full-time, 35 hours a week contract working night-shifts, should we out-law them?
You know the flexibility works both ways, because in a permanent full-time contract, a lot of them these days have details such as "you will be employed 35 hours a week, between 9 and 5, but the company reserves the right to change the location and hours and times of employment to suit business needs and you may be required to work other hours etc etc"...then this leads to abuse. You get plenty of people contracted to work 35 hours a week, who end up feeling under pressure to work a lot more for no extra pay. Whereas on zero hours contracts, you don't want the shift? You don't do it. You're not actually required to do any.
It's funny because when Channel 4 news did their piece on zero-hours contracts, they interviewed two youngsters, a girl and young lad. They were both on zero-hours contracts. The girl said she liked her contract as she could fit it around the child-care for her young son, if she could do the work, she'd do it, if it wasn't convenient she'd turn it down and they'd give it to someone else, she could come in normally as she saw fit and do work as and when she was able to top up the family's income, without impacting on her family life.
The lad was different, he did the whole moaning about not always getting the amount of work he wanted, sometimes he'd go days without work, not knowing when it was going to come. He said he had to sit around in his bedroom doing nothing getting bored and feeling depressed.
Without wanting to stray into what will be perceived as Thatcherism, I was thinking watching this, that the only person he was being exploited by was his own lazy personality, where clearly the expectation was that a decent job and regular work should be handed to his sorry lazy a** on a plate and that because his flexible contract wasn't giving him the work he wanted, he had no choice but to sit on his a** all day feeling sorry for himself, rather than looking for other sources of income, or a new job.
I go back to my point, zero-hours contracts are a vital part of our employment infrastructure, providing vital revenue streams for many in fair, ethical situations. There is plenty of abuse, poor working conditions and unreasonable practice going on with full-time and part-time permanent contracts. No talk of blanket banning them, is there?
