Tory ‘toothless’ hours law

A key coalition government measure came into force on Tuesday (May 26) – the banning of exclusivity clauses in zero hours contracts.

 
Now, employers cannot block workers who are on the contracts, which guarantee no minimum hours, from seeking work elsewhere.

 
It’s a measure that prime minister David Cameron hailed during his election campaign, saying that “people are employed, they are not used. Those exclusive zero-hours contracts that left people unable to build decent lives for themselves – we will scrap them.”

 
But now that they’re officially scrapped, experts in employment law have argued that the legislation is unenforceable and will make little difference to millions of people on zero hours contracts now struggling to make ends meet.

 
Employment lawyer Elizabeth George, who represents zero-hours workers in a case against Sports Direct, told the Guardian that the legislation is “utterly toothless”.

 
“This piece of legislation says that employers can’t enforce these [exclusivity] clauses in a zero-hours contract,” she said. “But if they operate a policy of reducing or not offering hours to those who have worked elsewhere there’s no right for workers to do anything about it.”

 
Kirsty Ayre, from law firm Irwin Mitchell, explained another potential loophole in banning exclusivity clauses.
“Employers can still include clauses requiring workers on such contracts to be available for work if required, which may have a similar impact to an exclusivity clause,” she said.

 
Tip of the iceberg

 
Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner argued that only banning exclusivity clauses completely misses all the other ways in which zero-hours contracts are exploitative and contribute to a plummeting race to the bottom in the labour market.

 
“Banning exclusivity clauses is a joke,” Turner noted. “It misses the key point that zero hours confer fear and misery of those forced into them – no security, no protection and little dignity.

 
“With millions now declared ‘self-employed’, under-employed and insecure at work, we believe that the scale of workplace insecurity is vastly underestimated by the Tory government and needs to be addressed,” he added. “When business fails to create decent jobs, there are serious and deep social and economic consequences for our country.”

 
A Cambridge University study highlights the increasingly insecure nature of work that Turner refers to, and demonstrates how shift work in all its varieties has added significantly to workplace stress and anxiety.

 
The Cambridge researchers interviewed workers on insecure contracts at two major supermarket chains, one in the US and one in the UK, in addition to months of shop-floor observation.

 
The researchers called zero-hours contracts only the “tip of the iceberg” of insecure work arrangements, with co-author of the report Dr Brendan Burchell arguing that so-called “workplace flexibility” has many manifestations.

 
“Workplace flexibility is thought of as helping employees, but it has become completely subverted across much of the service sector to suit the employer – and huge numbers of workers are suffering as a consequence,” he said.

 
“Might as well stay on dole”

 
“So-called ‘flexi-contracts’, whether that’s zero, eight or 10 hours – none of which can provide a living – allow low-level management unaccountable power to dictate workers’ hours and consequent income to a damaging extent that is open to incompetency and abuse,” Burchell added.

 
Beyond contributing to workplace stress, anxiety and depression, and being blocked from earning more, the Cambridge study found flexible contracts meant workers were losing out on key access to education and training programmes that might help them find better jobs.

 
One of the UK supermarket workers Burchell and his colleagues interviewed was a man on a flexi-contract, which guaranteed only three hours of work a week.

 
“Nobody can possibly survive on three and a half hours’ pay a week,” the worker said. “And then it boils down to you’ve got your three and a half hours plus you’ve got flexed-time which they will give you if they need you.

 
“But once your face doesn’t fit you don’t get any more hours and you might as well stay on the dole really.”

 
Corporate welfare

 
Turner argued that the government should be looking into why so many people were “facing desperate times at work”, adding that it must also force employers to pay decent wages for guaranteed hours rather than “exploiting corporate welfare as a way of subsidising exploitation.”

 
It was a point made in the Spectator last month, which outlined just how much bosses stand to gain from employing growing legions of zero-hours and other insecure workers.

 
“Not only does an employer enjoy far lower bills for holiday and sick pay entitlements, as well as pension contributions, for zero hours and part-time employers, they enjoy other benefits too,” the Spectator noted.

 
“The employer’s National Insurance contribution liability doesn’t kick in until an employee earns £156 or more per week, so many companies now ensure they limit employees’ hours to below that threshold. When extra hours are available, instead of offering more hours to existing part-time staff, some of whom are desperate for full-time work, these companies simply hire more zero-hours or part-time staff.”

 
Turner condemned yesterday’s “token measures” taken by the government to combat work insecurity, which, he said, “do little to address the misery of hand-to-mouth, wait by the phone jobs”.

 
Norman Pickavance former HR manager for Morrison’s, who’s been an outspoken critic of zero-hours contracts, contends that weak legislation like the exclusivity clauses ban will only serve to further embolden employers who are eager to cut costs and “go further down the zero-hours route.”

 
What’s more, zero-hours contracts are ultimately bad for the economy in the long-term. As Pickavance points out, when low-wage, insecure jobs dominate the labour market, productivity suffers.

 
“An economic environment that fosters insecure, low wage, low skill jobs, and fails to back innovation and investment in skills will only ever deliver anaemic economic performance.”