Apologies for the link, but it appears that [url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2381118/Age-zero-hours-jobs-Sports-Direct-staff-know-long-theyll-work--theyll-earn.htmlMike Ashley's Sports Direct is 'employing' some 20,000 staff on zero-hours contracts[/url.

This isn't a struggling independent company, but a rather larger concern. Flexibility is one thing, but zero-hours contracts are nothing but exploitation, and don't benefit the wider economy or the majority of individuals who find themselves in such a working situation.

Surely they should be made illegal?

Should be made illegal?
Surely not, I mean Cameron says that EU employment law is too inflexible.

Not necessarily defending this, but I will just comment on when I worked for JJB Sports during my college years (a few years back, I admit):

A good 80-90% of the staff easily were in the same or similar boat as me. When I was at the main Hull store there were probably a rotating 40-50 members of staff, including 1 manager, 1 assistant manager, 2 area supervisors, and a few other full-timers operating the tills etc. The rest was pretty much all college/university students working around their lectures/study time. Not having set hours or even having to come in if we didn't want suited most of us fine, as did being able to pick up extra hours if we were free from time to time and during the holiday periods.

IMO they're like many things, not inherently a problem, but open to abuse. I don't think you should ban things on that basis, but they do need policing better.

That sounds rather disorganised on the part of the company, if it was just left to staff to turn up when they felt like it, wouldn't there be times when the shop was overstaffed and times when it was understaffed?

The university wallers should have gone full-time.
They'd have been about £100,000 better off shortly with their staff bonus and no £30,000 of tuition fees debt.

Well it wasn't just when you felt like on a whim.

What I meant was, nobody had fixed hours they had to do every week, but likewise nor were they guaranteed any hours, either. Rotas were done for about 4 weeks at a time by the manager. If anyone wanted the time off they were free to swap with another member of staff so long as management were informed and it was somebody who could do the same job.

Shops also 'lent' staff to each other if necessary.

I can see this being of benefit to, as you suggest, students, but my prime concern is with the majority of those who are not students, who are employed on such contracts 'full time', so to speak, as their living.

As the article says, it's happening increasingly in the public services, particularly in the hugely privatised homecare area. This is just one aspect of the increasing casualisation of that sector, and it's not only not good for someone working in that way, but it's also not good for those they are supposed to be caring for.

Additionally, in the hunt both to cut costs and make a profit in that area, there's also a question of homecare workers increasingly only being given 15 minutes (or even less) to see each person they must visit, which is quite clearly not enough if someone needs help getting up and dressing, for instance, or in preparing food.

Those homecare wallahs can just make it up in their expense account surely?

Zero hour contracts aren't a sudden surprise to anyone though are they?
It's been plain to see this is the way we've been heading for years, the back door has been left well and truly open.
The crime is that the labor movement and TUC haven't been able to effectively combat it as workers rights have been diminished and been increasingly eroded over the last three decades..

I agree, it definitely needs to be policed well as I said. I was simply saying that I wouldn't be too quick to assume Sports Direct are being hugely exploitative, as if it is anything like when I used to work in that area then the workforce is largely skewed towards students, so the 90% may well not be that unusual.

Simple maths from that piece says that there is an average of 56 members of staff at every Sports Direct shop. I find that massively hard to believe without it being lots of people effectively 'job-sharing' in the way we used to.

[url=http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/jul/30/buckingham-palace-zero-hours-contractsNow available if you work at Buck House, Cineworld and any of the Tate galleries.[/url

The Guardian seems to think they're ok too.

[urlhttp://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/30/zero-hours-contracts-case-studies[/url

The [iGuardian[/i being hypocritical does not change the issue.

Please do try harder in your new incarnation.

It's a good job the Unions are still strong, isn't it?

As pointed out previously, zero hour contracts may suit some people at some stages of their life, but for most they are a disaster and its noticeable how most of them involve pay rates at or close to the national minimum wage.

There is only one thing worse than doing a job on national minimum wage and that is doing a job on national minimum wage when you don't know how many hours or shifts you'll be allocated next week, or later on this week, or tomorrow, or at all.

But it gets even worse than that when you want to try and find somewhere to live for which mortgage company or even private landlord is going to take a punt on you when you have no clue what your wage will be next week and all the evidence in your pay packets simply proves is that your take home pay is at the whim of your boss or agency.

Credit for anything, forget it, need a car to get to that zero hour contract but can't afford to pay outright for it, forget it, or be prepared to pay the top rates of interest for even meagre loans from reputable lenders come at an interest premium when your wage is not guaranteed and/or reliant on bonus or overtime - you never get the advertised rate on loans when you're on limited or zero hours contract.

The current campaign movement is towards havign one day when immigrant workers withdraw their labour to prove how much society depends upon them - what might be even more powerful is for anyone on less than 10 hour a week contracts to withdraw their labour for one week - they won't even notice the loss in income, but the rest of us will notice their non attendance.

Yep. Plus the increasing trend toward being phoned up on the day by the agency and told where you'll be going that day. Often not in the same city with wildly differing hours.
No contracted hours. No certainty of location. No certainty of benefit eligibility.

But we need [imore[/i deregulation – that's what will get the economy going again!

Except that many employees won't dare to.
They don't have much in the way of employment law to protect them and will be afraid of being summarily sacked ... divide and rule works very well where there is no union to organise the protest.

It looks like 38 Degrees have Sports Direct in their sights now. They've achieved some decent results with their campaigns, most recently defeating Hunt over Lewisham Hospital A&E.

If a senior manager or director of any private business was placed in charge of important flagship projects which then crumbled and failed at the first challenge then they would have their authority severely undermined and their position in the company would be in jeopardy.

The number of flagship policy projects that have failed at the first challenge under this current government is impressive in its "make it up on the fly" and "rush it through before 2015 is upon us" stylee.

And yet they keep their positions, shrug their shoulders and press on with the next doctrine as if none of this matters.

It's hardly been just them, but a massive grassroots campaign locally. Very, very effective.

Didn't say it was just them. They did collect from donors to pay the legal team that successfully challenged Hunt though.

[url=http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/princess-diana-charity-axes-2400-2122744#.Uf4zCl_jW8o.twitterAnd another one – this time, sacking staff and reemploying them on worse terms, including zero-hours contracts[/url.

What issue, zero contract hours have been around years, they just now have this pithy little name. 20 years ago I worked part time in a pub, I can still remember the phone calls asking me to come in with barely any notice or telling me not to bother as there was no-one in the bar. Then again I may have been the only person in the country to have this arrangement.

It's heartbreaking that the bloke from Cineworld has "real difficulties" with this kind of job, yet he's made it last for 4 years. Hmmm.

Personally, I'm slightly more concerned by companies like Apple who use companies that employ children in the Far East to build their computers so people in the West are now able, through blogs/Twitter/etc, to get all morally indignant about the plight of workers in their own countries.