Lord Snape
Main Page: Lord Snape (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, like other speakers, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Quin for the opportunity to debate this matter, albeit with such a short time available to us. My experience of short-term contracts came around a year ago, when I was talking to a young man in the West Midlands who left school at 18, lived with his girlfriend in a flat and worked in the fast-food industry. I have never been a fan of the fast-food industry—neither its products nor its working practices—particularly after my daughter had some bad experiences working in that industry, but at least she was at university, so it was temporary; this young man was looking for permanent work. He never knew from one week to the next how many hours he was going to get. He never knew from one week to the next which shift he was on. He was told on a Sunday evening what his working hours would be for the following week. He was more than six foot tall, and they obviously felt he would be useful in the event of any trouble, so they regularly rostered him for afternoon and evening work. He was prepared to put up with that, despite the inconvenience.
This was at a McDonald’s in Halesowen in the West Midlands, a franchise operation. The young man related to me how he would get to work at five o’clock in the afternoon, the time laid down, and be told by the franchisee, “It is pretty quiet. Go and sit in the kitchen for an hour”. Of course, he sat in the kitchen for an hour without any pay. He then started work at six o’clock—if it was a quiet evening, it would be seven—and went home at nine o’clock, paid just for the three hours he worked. On a Saturday evening, when it was busy, he was expected to help to close the place at 11 o’clock and then—all credit to the fast-food industry for this: it is very keen on hygiene—spend an hour cleaning up the place ready for the following day, again without pay.
All of us in the House were 18 at some stage. Would we really want to be treated in the way that many of our young people are these days because of those contracts? Eighteen year-olds are not children. They can join the Army, they can fly aeroplanes, they can drive motor cars and they can get married, yet they are expected to work in the industry, if that is the right word for it, in this young man’s case, for £5 an hour.
When I was 18, I was a railway signalman. It was 1960, so I was paid a fraction under £10 a week. With overtime, I could possibly take home £14 or £15. In real terms, looking at the wages I was paid in 1960 compared to £5 an hour now, I earned three times as much as that young man.
Is it any wonder that our young people are disillusioned with life and politics and vote, if they vote at all, in the way outlined by my noble friends who have already spoken? The fact is that short-term contracts are a scandal and it is time that the Government did something to outlaw them.