Zero Hour Contracts and Labour Market Precarity

Since the Guardian uncovered that Sports Direct and, prior to that, Buckingham Palace, were employing many of their staff on ‘zero hour contracts’ the shocking truth of the precarity of the UK labour market has been increasingly brought to light. Today the newspaper also revealed that McDonalds employs 90% of its staff (83,000 people) on such contracts (Guardian, 2013).

A spokesperson for the fast food giant defends the company’s practice by arguing that "(m)any of our employees are parents or students who are looking to fit flexible, paid work around childcare, study and other commitments.” (ibid.). Perhaps unsurprisingly, she offers no substance for this assertion when, in fact, the evidence shows that precarious work has a variety of negative consequences for most workers.

Below I present some of this research and end with a wider discussion of the issue. Following the broader theme of this blog, I reflect on the injustice of zero-hour contracts and discuss how they are indicative of the wider moral deficiency of the current form of capitalism.

First, here is a flavour of some of the vast quantity of literature on the relation between precarious work and health and well-being:

·         A cross-national study of casual and non-casual workers in OECD countries found that the former reported more health complaints and a poorer work-life balance than the latter (Bohle et al. 2004)

·         In a comparison between six labour market groups, Virtanen et al (2003) found that those on ‘atypical’ contracts (characterized by insecurity) were second only to the unemployed in terms of poor self-rated health, disease and depression.

·         In other instances, it has been shown that poor quality/precarious work can actually be worse for health and well-being than unemployment (Bambra 2011, Butterworth et al., 2011)

The following studies reveal something about the nature of the relationship between precarious work and family and social life:

·         Bohle et al. (2004) show that disruption to family and social life is markedly higher amongst casual workers.

·         More specifically, Artazcoz et al. (2005) find that precarious employment affects whether men and women decide to remain single, cohabit or even have children.

·         Le Bihan and Martin (2004) find that unpredictable and non-negotiable working hours typically lead parents to depend on informal childcare arrangements, i.e. grandparents and friends (contrary to claims by the spokesperson from McDonalds that zero-hour contracts are helpful for parents in arranging childcare).

·         Lastly, the qualitative effects that casual working conditions have on family life can be seen quite poignantly in the following interview with a mother working under such circumstances:

"We do not have such a thing as a typical day. This week has been the first one when we have had some regularity at work. Actually, after the birth of my son, we haven’t had any routine . . . I have normally three different shifts and I haven’t had a permanent contract. This has meant that I never know when they call me for work. I can’t, for example, tell my son in the morning whether he will have to go to the day-care centre that day or not.” (ibid).

Employees on zero hour contracts lose out in two ways. Not only are their hours unpredictable, they are also often non-negotiable. Thus, as one contract from the fast food retailer Subway shows, employees are ‘in debt’ to their employer:

"The company has no duty to provide you with work. Your hours of work are not predetermined and will be notified to you on a weekly basis as soon as is reasonably practicable in advance by your store manager. The company has the right to require you to work varied or extended hours from time to time." (Guardian, 2013, emphasis added)

Noting the sections in bold above, it is clear that the company is dictating an employment contract which is beneficial to them from the perspective of maximising efficiency and profit-making (through keeping staff costs low/in line with managerial preferences). Read in this way, the language of the ‘zero hours employer’ is symbolic of the uncompromising nature of modern capitalism. It is assumed that efficiency trumps all, regardless of social or environmental costs. Calls for an end to zero hour contracts must therefore be welcomed as they pose a fundamental challenge to the value base of our current economic system.