+1
My wife and I moved to the UK a couple of years ago and the only employment we could acquire at the time, after 7 weeks of looking, was a zero hours / minimum wage contract (warehouse position) with a large UK retailer. We were among 1000 seasonal staff taken on for the Christmas Peak Period. We met several people who were still on zero hours contracts after 5 years + of employment.
(1)The agency would text us at any time up to 11pm to let us know if we had work the following morning at 6am - or, if we were working at 2pm, we would receive a text at about 12pm. (We, like most other employees lived an hours drive from work). We had to text back immediately to let them know or they would text someone else and we would lose our hours for that day.
(2) It was typical for a sizeable minority of people to be sent home within minutes of arriving in work, even after receiving / responding to a text message. This occured as the 'figures' for projected orders wouldn't be generated until after people had received / responded to the text. If someone complained - they would never receive another text.
(3) There were 3 large onsite employment agencies controlling all of the hours and as a result, these people had total control.The same agencies controlled most 'picker / packer warehouse' employment in all of the warehouses in the north of England. We applied for a similar position in a different company - as we were not receiving enough hours to pay our bills - through a different agency and we were refused as the agencies had 'an unspoken rule' amongst them that they would not 'poach' from each other. In effect, we were tied to the one agency, even if that meant we received a mere 8 hours pay at £6.5 per hour in any given week.
(4)The inequitable relationship between employer and employee encouraged the worst type of bullying behaviour (and worse) on the part of the employer.
(5)We found it impossible to plan our finances with any certainty and, as a result, we stopped 'participating' in the economy. We cut out all lunches, coffees, clothes purchasing etc. We were constantly stressed out waiting for the text to arrive. We found ourselves checking our phones every 30 seconds - in case we had accidentally switched it off or on to silent mode. I kept repeating the mantra that ' The how of living is tolerable if one has a why to live for' - as we knew that we would eventually be in a position to leave. But the awful reality is that everyone we met in the warehouse had the same issues without any prospect of change. My wife spoke to some women who lived in mouldy / freezing accommodation as they were afraid to turn on the heating and were afraid to shower, as they couldn't predict their wages and as a result were afraid of not being able to pay their electricity / water charges at the end of each month. We never met anyone in the warehouse who didn't want to work every hour that was available to them.
In my opinion, low hours / zero hours contracts need to be outlawed ASAP. Adam Smith's rising tide analogy is oft quoted by people who justify these exploitative work practices. The reality is that people on these ccntracts should not have to be sacrificed to ensure our 'recovery' maintains momentum. Then again, one would hardly expect a bunch of privately educated parliamentarians to 'understand' this.