17 December 2014

This week is Decent Jobs Week, a TUC campaign drawing attention to the millions of people in the UK who are trapped in low-paid, insecure jobs, with diminished employment rights.

The number of workers on zero hours contracts is 1.4 million, and growing. The media is saturated with stories of economic recovery and falling unemployment. What’s being talked about less, however, is that the jobs being created are of poor quality, with a massive boom in self-employment and only one in forty new jobs being full time. This transformation in the employment market is ensuring that the economic recovery remains exclusively for the rich.

The TUC has released a report, The Decent Jobs Deficit – The Human Cost of Zero-Hours Working in the UK, which details the reality of precarious employment, low pay, exploitation and casualisation in 2014.

Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, said: “The growth of zero-hours contracts, along with other forms of precarious employment, is one of the main reasons why working people have seen their living standards worsen significantly in recent years. It is shocking that so many workers employed on these kind of contracts are on poverty pay and miss out on things that most of us take for granted like sick pay.”

Analysing data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the TUC found that workers on zero-hours contracts earn on average £300 less a week than permanent staff, and are five times less likely to qualify for statutory sick pay, due to their poverty wages – 39% of ZHC workers earn less than £111 a week.

The report notes, “Of particular concern has been the sharp increase in zero-hours contracts and the widespread use of agency workers in the aftermath of the recession. Too often workers on such contracts face working conditions better suited to the Victorian era than 21st century Britain”. The TUC is calling on the government to “challenge precarious employment and introduce policies to encourage the creation of decent jobs, on decent hours and pay”.

Among its policy recommendations, the TUC stresses the need for improved employment rights for zero-hours contract workers and others on casual contracts, and better access for all workers to union representation and collective bargaining. The IER agrees that the best way to improve working conditions, to reduce income inequality and to create a strong economy is through collective bargaining. To find out more about collective bargaining, the IER’s Reconstruction After the Crisis: A Manifesto for Collective Bargaining is available for purchase.

For more information on zero-hours contracts and the consequences they have for workers Re-regulating Zero Hours Contracts provides an in-depth analysis.