Comparing part time casual bar work to a job that is supposed to be your full time and main source of income, the one that your whole employment and financial credibility is going to be based on but can't be because there is nothing for those credit agencies to base your earnings upon, is just...

stupid.

Why? It gave me what little money I needed to have some sort of life while at college. The terms meant I was at their beck and call. The very definition of a "zero hour contract".
Of the 250,000 people trapped in the life threatening cycle, that offers them no hope, how many are just after a bit of spare cash? how many are using it as their main source of income? how many are actually that ed off with it? how many are perfectly happy with the arrangement? how many actually go that extra yard to get the hours on the rota? if this awful way of working was suddenly abolished, of the 250,000, how many would be offered full time work?
Still, lets just stick with "zero hour contracts, they're just so unfair...waaaahhhhh"

You've answered your own question in your little foot-stomp.

You were using it to make a bit of pocket money while you were at college and if you've read any of this thread you'll understand that that aspect of it is well understood by most.

The fact that I used to work the bars at Leeds CF&A once a fortnight at home games never once crossed my mind when I applied for a mortgage at Northern rock, nor did the thought that working part time behind a bar for a bit of pocket money would qualify me for a mortgage or even a rental application.

The whole point, that you have spectacularly missed, is that zero hour contracts are of no use to anyone who lives outside of the student-part-time-pocket-money sector, for when those students leave university clutching their brand new degrees in hand with their £40,000 student loan debt, then what they don't need, at the age of 21 or 22, is an employer who offers them a job on NMW with no guarantee of any shifts or payment at the end of any given week.

That newly fledged highly qualified student will not be able to take their employment contract or their last three months wage slips to any building society or letting agency and prove with any confidence that they have a regular income, for the truth is that they don't.

Now do you see why your previous comment was stupid ?

If they've been offered a job at NMW with no guarantees, then their student loan debt is irrelevent. Unless they're somehow pulling in over 21000k a year.

Lets have the numbers then? You do know, don't you?
Is everyone one on a zero hour contract living with parents? under a bridge? in their car in sports direct car park?

No, most will be entitled to Working Tax Credits, if they have children they will be entitled to Child Tax Credits, there is even an inducement there for both employee and employer to NOT pay contracted hours, thats how mad the system is, it favours both employer and employee to work the contract to maximise the benefit claim to the employee, and in doing so lowers the payroll cost to the employer (not to mention the reduced NIS tax) - the tax payer is both subsidising and encouraging the private sector to play the system and whilst there would appear to be no downside (unemployment, though high, is not as high as the so called "experts" believe it should be, they just haven't seen this type of capitalism before) there is - its just not become apparent yet.

It hasn't become apparent because the past five years have been very static years, the buying/selling house market declined rapidly and stayed flat, is still very flat, people are hesitant to move jobs or move house, everyone is marking time waiting for the boom years to return and zero or 16 hour contracts are a way in which they can hold their ground - until things get better.

The downside will not affect me, I have a house, I have paid off the bulk of the mortgage, if I sold tomorrow I have enough equity to buy something else, some thing smaller, but I won't have to live in my car - I only got here though because in 1981 the Northern Rock Building Society took a look at my employment record, my salary level, and got a letter from my employer to say I was in permanent full time employment and we need that cycle to keep on running, we need first time buyers coming in on the ground floor and they have been severely curtailed in the past five years and will continue to be severely curtailed by contracts of employment that show no commitment from the employer or pay slips that show a fluctuating insecure level of hours and a reference from an employer that tells the lender that this employee does not have a permanent job in accordance with the lenders definition of permanent.

Thats the downside and the job market will continue like this for years to come, once an employer uses agency or no-committed hours contracts AND uses the taxpayer to underwrite his payroll costs then it will take draconian legislation to reverse the trend.

Variable low or no hours contracts give individuals no future stake in anything but a dependence on tax credits.

[url=http://www.barnetunison.me.uk/?q=node/1252The Barnet Solution[/url

Preserve front-line servies by slashing the pay and conditions of those working in front-line services

[urlhttp://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/05/zero-hours-contracts-cover-1m-uk-workers[/url

There are statistics and then are are other statistics, and then there is the definition of what is a "zero hour contract" with some estimates of up to 1 million of them in use.

The official government produced statistics show that 250,000 are on such contracts but from memory the ONS annual survey of businesses (which always starts with a threat of legal action and large fines if you don't fill it in correctly) never asked a business owner what type of employment contract they operated but instead asked what hours a sample range of named employees were working - for my business they picked just one employee (who happened to be my brother

) and each year they would demand details, under threat, of what his average working hours were and his rate of pay.

If they are still using the same format (and its only three years since I completed the last one) then their compulsory survey would reveal nothing about the type of employment contracts being used within businesses for even an employee on a zero hour contract would legitimately be able to reply that they work [isome [/ihours every week and I suspect that the ONS are not actually collecting this data at all but simply estimating it - or "believing it" to be so.

This one seems to have been carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (I was just about to link to another report of it).

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23570345As this report says[/url:

"The CPID said one in five employers in the UK had at least one person on a zero-hours contract. This means workers can be officially counted as employed, but have no guaranteed paid work and can be sent home from their workplace without warning and without having earned anything."

As Jerry said a few posts ago: "Variable low or no hours contracts give individuals no future stake in anything but a dependence on tax credits."

And yes, it will take legislation to tackle it, and as Jerry has (more than once) commented about housing, that will require political will.

One thing is for sure, no-one will get a mortgage on the strength of that kind of contract.
I guess that even you can see that will restrict them to the rented sector, which is the big area whose cost that IDS is trying to reduce ... but, whilst he has the mean-ness and narrowness of mind to blame people for needing a roof over their heads, he hasn't the capacity for joined-up thinking.

It's fine for him, his Pa-in-law (5th Baron Cottesloe) provides him with a huge house.

Ragged-trousered philanthropy in action

The sensationalist press (Guardian and Mail) estimate up to 1 million on such contracts. The Sunday Times estimates up to 500,000. Seems no one has a clue. The Daily Mail has a balanced opinion on it - inherently bad and should be stopped but in those situations where people find them useful (eg students, etc wishing flexibility) they should not be totally outlawed. Getting that balance would be tricky though.

What I find odd is that seasonal businesses think it's OK (eg royal palaces, National Trust, etc). Why can't they just offer fixed term contracts so people know where they stand?

If zero hours contracts are so good, why aren't more bosses and managers on them?

As does the Indie.


The Daily Mail doesn't count.


Because they want to shift the risk onto the employee.

As do the BBC (linked posted earlier) and the [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/10221928/One-million-people-on-zero-hours-contracts.html[iTelegraph[/i[/url.

Ah, so everyone has to be able to get a mortgage to have fulfillment in their lives? Mortgages are bloody difficult to get for full time workers these days too, I know, I had to use the "bank of mum and dad" like plenty of people up and down the country.

If you want to tell me that houses are to expensive for what they actually are, a pile of bricks, then I'll agree completely with you. Trying to argue that zero hour contracts are somehow immoral because people can't get a mortgage if they work under these conditions is laughable.

Where did I say that?
Did you miss the bit about renting and IDS?


Oh, poor you, I really feel sorry for you.


Where did I say that?
Again, did you miss the bit about renting and IDS?

If people can't get mortgages, then renting is the only option if they want their own place, well done on stating the obvious.


No need, I do ok. They're loaded. Win win.

As for IDS, you don't like him, big deal. I couldn't give a toss what he says/does until it affects me.

Yes. You made it quite clear, in your previous incarnation, that you're an entirely selfish individual.

Ah, it has sunk in then?
Jolly good.


Quite.

And I'm fine with that. Just need to buy a lovely stylish Apple product now, hopefully built by some 6 year old in China.

Correct! Now given private landlords require proof of a reliable income can you now take the final step on your journey to enlightenment and realise that given zero hours contracts don't give any such proof they also prevent people taking the "only option" as you put it?



If you think IDS's and the rest of the governments various screw ups in this area aren't affecting you, you must a take a very narrow view. For example if changes to housing benefits and things like the bedroom tax force tenants into rent arrears the cost of (probably futile attempts at) recovery has to be paid for by someone and that will be the tax payer both in terms of council tax or reduced local services and income tax. I presume that includes you?

Its already affecting you. The cost to the tax payer for ESA and PIP appeals and tribunals is actually more than if they assessed fairly in the first place. Disabled people who have had homes specially adapted which costs hundreds if not thousands of tax payers money are now having to move into smaller homes which then need to be adapted which costs the tax payer a second time, hundreds if not thousands of pounds, not forgetting the cost to the tax payer to put the first house back to a "normal" house.

Oh yes, its already affecting you, if you care to look.

Is it impossible to get accomodation if you work a zero hour contract?


My council tax went up continually until recently and has now been frozen for 2/3 years. My income tax has also reduced.

When my tax goes up, you may have a point. Right now, I get taxed and that money gets spent on lots of things. What that proportion is doesn't really matter.

So you don't mind then that your income tax is going to be used to give childcare vouchers to parents with an income upto £300,000 pa but not to stay at home mothers who will receive nothing? I'd be hopping mad.