there is an early 19th-century feel to zero-hour contracts. It is as though Britain has gone back to the future, returned to an age where the employer had the whip hand and where the rights that workers enjoyed under the feudal system had been removed.
It is a pity Karl Marx was not around last week to comment on the news that 90% of the workers at Sports Direct are on zero-hours contracts. The author of the Communist Manifesto would also have had plenty to say about the news that the official estimates of those working in this form of casualised labour had shot up by 25%. It would have amused him to hear that even Buckingham Palace – the very symbol of the ruling class – had got in on the act.
It is safe to say Marx would have cavilled with those who see zero-hour contracts as an expression of Britain's economic strength, a demonstration of flexible labour markets in action. He would have thought "reserve army of labour" a better description of conditions in which workers were expected to be permanently on call for an employer.
The Office for National Statistics said last week that 250,000 people were now on zero-hour contracts – a 25% increase on its previous estimates but still small in relation to the 30 million people employed in the UK. The estimate is, however, disputed by some labour market experts who point out that more than 300,000 care workers are on such contracts. What is certain is that the total is on a steep upward curve; it may be as high as one million and growing.
Bodies representing employers say zero-hour contracts should be welcomed since without them unemployment would be even higher. Better, they say, that people should be working 20 hours one week and no hours at all the next rather than be on the dole.
Seen in this light, Vince Cable – who is conducting a review of the contracts – should be thinking of further deregulation of the labour market rather than contemplating measures that might reduce this "flexibility". He could, for instance, repeal the 1874 Factory Act that banned children under 10 from working in a manufacturing plant. He could rethink the 1847 10-hour Act that said children should not work for more than 10 hours a day. He could be really bold and say that Parliament erred in 1841 when it voted in favour of the Mines Act that prevented a child under 10 from working underground in a pit. Because, let's face it, all this legislation represented regulation of the labour market that made it less "flexible".
It's only fair to say that some employees are content to be on zero-hour contracts. Some students, for example, want to combine work with study and are willing to turn up when summoned. That's also true of older workers topping up their pensions with a bit of irregular, part-time work... read more:
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