Zero intolerance
Norman Pickavance says zero-hours reforms don't go far enoughUnless you’ve been under an HR rock, you’ll be aware that this week saw new laws pertaining to zero-hours contracts come into force.
In the run up to the election, zero-hours contracts were a fairly large bone of contention between the Conservatives and Labour. Labour were seeking to seriously curtail their usage, while the Conservatives were far milder in their ambitions, seeking only to apply a little tinkering.
As was promised in their manifesto, they’ve amended the law to ban exclusivity contracts, meaning companies can no longer have workers beholden to them when they’re not giving them work.
Nick Boles, Business Minister, explains: “Exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts prevent people from boosting their income when they have no guarantee of work.
“Banning these clauses will give working people the freedom to take other work opportunities and more control over their work hours and income. It brings financial security one step closer for lots of families.”
The CBI welcomed the changes too, believing them to be “proportionate” but warning against any further action in limiting zero-hours contracts.
Pickavance picks a fight
On the whole, business is very much on the side of zero-hours contracts. But not everybody is a fan. We caught up with Norman Pickavance, Head of People and Culture at Grant Thornton and erstwhile employment advisor to Ed Miliband. Pickavance has written independent reports on zero-hours contracts and their impact in the workplace, and he doesn’t like what he sees.
“Zero-hours working practices are like knotweed,” says Pickavance, “increasingly taking over the entire low skilled-low pay employment landscape. At companies like McDonald’s they now represent over 90% of all employee contracts, and the same is true across a growing number of retailers.
“The data shows that over 50% of those now on zero-hours contracts have been ’employed’ by the same firm for over a year. Yet, in such arrangements, employment rights are not accrued and the prospect of simply being told you are not required hangs over people. This is no way to build commitment or grow a skilled, confident and motivated workforce.”
Pickavance believes that we are sitting on a ticking timebomb. He thinks business’s love of zero-hours contracts is indicative of a dysfunctional UK employment market which leads to, he contends, “an economic environment which fosters insecure, low wage, low skill jobs, and fails to back innovation and investment in skills and will only ever deliver anaemic economic performance.”
This situation will result, he says, in “a blight on the lives of many ordinary working people. [It will] give rise not only to financial instability and trap people into ‘in-work poverty’ but also result in stress related sickness rates up to four times higher than people who are in well paid secure jobs.”
Back to basics
An easy parallel to draw is the rules put in place banning casual labour on the docks in 1947. Chronic under-employment in the industry led to serious social ills. As far back as 1920, Lord Shaw wrote that “the system is injurious to the interests of the workers, the ports and the public, and discreditable to society… It should be torn up by the roots.
“It is a convenience to authorities and employers…to have a reservoir of unemployment which can be readily tapped as the need emerges. If men were merely the spare parts of an industrial machine, this callous reckoning might be appropriate; but society will not tolerate much longer… the employment of human beings along these lines.”
Almost one hundred years later, Lord Shaw might be surprised that the argument has still not been resolved.
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