Zero Hours Contracts Can Provide Flexibility, Says WJM’s John Grant
Published byJohn Grant
The following article by WJM’s John Grant was recently published in the Scottish Licensed Trade News - subscribe here or on Twitter @TheSLTN.
The issue of Zero-Hours Contracts has been in the news frequently since 2013 and remains a hot political topic. Only this week, Edinburgh Napier University were accused of “damaging the reputation of higher education” by advertising for a Zero-Hours Contract lecturer.
There is currently a Private Member’s Bill before the UK Parliament that seeks to prohibit their use and to outlaw any that are already in place, albeit this is thought to be extremely unlikely to succeed.
Further, recently, the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, made a speech in which he argued that the labour market was now “too flexible”. He also suggested that people on Zero-Hours Contracts should have a legal right to request a Fixed-Term Contract. This was described as being similar to employee’s existing rights to ask employers to grant them flexible working. However, the right to make such a request is only that and there is no guarantee that the employer would agree to the request. In fact, if the position did mirror the right to request flexible working, then there would be a large number of specific grounds for refusal and this may simply impose a further layer of bureaucracy for employers without a real benefit for employees.
There are also proposals to make “exclusivity clauses” (which prohibit workers from working for another employer) unenforceable, albeit there are further regulations to follow in relation to that. It is also clear that much more government guidance is necessary to allow certainty for both employees and employers.
But what could this mean for the licensed trade and how it operates? Demand for staff fluctuates wildly depending on what’s on locally, who’s playing sport and where, and what season it is. Staff requirements on a rainy, sport free Monday are very different from a Christmas season Thursday when local offices are out for their annual party and different again from the peak of the Commonwealth Games when Usain Bolt is running. Zero-Hours contracts are one method of managing temporary and casual staff and their availability to licensees to cope with customer demand.
With Zero-Hours Contracts, if people look beyond the extreme positions adopted on either side then it is clear that the reality is more nuanced.
Len McCluskey, the General Secretary of Unite had previously described Zero-Hours Contracts as “forming a one way street” and had estimated that some 5.5 million people are now on Zero-Hours Contracts. In contrast, the Office for National Statistics estimated 538,000 were in use in late 2013 and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (“CIPD”) estimated just over 1 million were in use in November 2013. It is suggested that part of the reason for the disparity between these figures is the fact that a number of employees may be unaware of what their employment status actually is. As with any employment relationship, it is in both employers and employee’s interests to have the certainty that the way the employment relationship is documented reflects the reality of the situation.
However, there are clearly a large number of employees who welcome the flexibility offered by Zero-Hours Contracts. CIPD carried out a survey in November 2013 that showed that Zero-Hours workers are just as satisfied with their job as the average UK employee and further just under half of Zero-Hours workers are satisfied or very satisfied with having no minimum set contractual hours. Kate Nicholls of the Association of Licenced Multiple Retailers commented that “Licenced hospitality is a sector which has a need for causal and temporary staff to deal with fluctuating demand. For many working in Licenced Retail, temporary and causal contracts offer a flexible method of working, particularly for those combining work with study.”
That would seem to reflect the reality of the situation for most people in the Licenced Trade, both employers and employees, who require the flexibility to be able to adapt to seasonal fluctuations and who are happy with Zero-Hours Contracts.
