Zero Hours Contracts Bill

George Howarth Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ian Mearns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. The Bill seeks to curtail the use of zero-hours contracts severely.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. He is making a powerful case for how morally repugnant that kind of employment is, but does he also agree that more enlightened employers say that it is actually a lazy form of employing people and that, with more thought, those employees could have proper contracts and proper hours?

[Ian Mearns]

I will be developing that point in due course.

The gross weekly average wage for a zero-hours contract worker is £236, which is a full £246 less than the average wage for those in regular, full-time employment. We really need to think about the fact that in a nation such as ours, and in this day and age, so many people are employed on irregular hours and earn a mere £236 a week. Workplaces that utilise zero-hours contracts have a higher proportion of staff on low pay, and those employed on zero-hours contracts also work fewer hours—they work an average of 21 hours a week—than those in other part-time jobs who are not on zero-hours contracts, who work an average of 31 hours a week.

Zero-hours contracts are an employer’s paradise. In fact, they are a one-way street, because they demand total flexibility and commitment from individual employees but offer very little in return from the employer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Mearns]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. In our community leadership role, as Members of Parliament representing constituencies throughout the country, we should be giving the lead on this by not giving succour to companies which, as he says, are engaged in these exploitative practices.

[Mr George Howarth]

My hon. Friend mentioned the old dock employment practices, which were known in Liverpool as the “pen system”, for all the obvious reasons. Is it not instructive that it was a Labour Government, when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, who abolished that system? Who abolished that in its turn? The Thatcher Government.

[Ian Mearns]

That comes as no surprise. The deregulation of workplace practices is the stock in trade of Members on the Government Benches.

Anyone who has had any experience of the hospitality sector will be familiar with workers being too frightened to turn down shifts or to make a complaint at work because of the fear that they will be “zeroed out” and employed for zero hours per week—in other words, no work this week and no work next week. Since the recession, there have been countless stories of employers who have fired their staff only to rehire them on zero-hours contracts, meaning that their workers are no longer entitled to sick leave, holiday pay, and other rights and protections.