Labour should pledge to ban “zero hours contracts” at the next election, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has said.
I’m a self-employed peripatetic trainer. I have zero hours arrangements with more than one client. It is an arrangement that suits us both – they call on me when needed and I have flexibility to work as and when it suits me. This has absolutely nothing to do with Andy Fucking Burnham and his fellow socialist parasites. So, no, zero hours contracts should not be banned. Not least because it is nothing to do with them and they should keep their prodnoses out of other peoples affairs. And, importantly, if they are banned, people like me would be deprived of a work stream because businesses could not afford to take me on full time – which is something that neither they nor I want anyway.
Fucking idiot.
As a teenager I used to do farmwork during the summer holidays in order to earn pocket money. At the time there was some kind of government call to have my holiday work banned because it was seen as exploitation of children or something*. The fact that the money was probably rubbish was really irrelevant from my point of view, as I was being supported by my parents I got to keep all of it and spend it on whatever I wanted, I felt unbelievably rich. I don’t even think that the farmer was profiteering from the cheap labour either, the difference that us kids made to his bottom line must have been tiny. As you say in the OP, the arrangement suited both parties so why does the government feel the need to get involved at all?
*I don’t know how this worked out because I left school and got a full time job. What I do know is that holiday work and paper rounds taught me a solid work ethic that has served me well for my entire life.
Quite. If there is a problem with the arrangement at any time, common law is in place to deal with it. Otherwise, they should butt out and mind their own business.
“As a teenager I used to do farmwork during the summer holidays in order to earn pocket money. At the time there was some kind of government call to have my holiday work banned because it was seen as exploitation of children or something”
Exactly. The zero hours contract is fit only for children living with mummy and daddy. It is not a model of employment for adults who must sustain themselves and their dependents.
But Labour (or rather Nu-Labour) hates the self-employed, don’t they? Despite all their protestations about disliking Big Business, pretty much everything they did during their last tenure in power – whether dictated by Brussels and gold-plated by them, or done entirely under their own steam – favoured the big corporations and cost the small businessman dear. Labour do not (and never have) want people to be independent and able to stand on their own two feet. If they can’t have them all completely, utterly and totally dependent on them (the State) and thus totally under their thumb (which, much to their dismay, they can’t, practically speaking), then the next best thing is to have them all under the thumb of the big corporations who will agree to do the socialists’ bidding, provided legislation keeps going their way and stamping out all those pesky little competitors.
Oh, and the Tories, for all sorts of other reasons, are no different, either. I despise the lot of them, but at least I despise them all equally!
What about a firm I work for?
They rely on a couple of hundred of mostly retired people, with a leavening of (mostly) post-Grad students to do survey work.
We all have employee numbers & NI payments (if we are under 65 – I’m not) … but the work is very much “As & when” & also tends to be very seasonal. And a very useful money-supplement it is too!
This would fold completely under these idiot proposals.
Looks like a classic case of : PLEASE engage BRAIN before opening MOUTH to me!
Who would benefit from such a ban? Would more jobs be created? Would more people be employed? Would it lift a single soul above the poverty line? Doesn’t make sense to anyone outside the political bubble reality these people live in.
Labour seem to have an awful lot to say about how people are going to be governed. Y’know, considering they are not even supposed to be in power right now.
Just noticed this in a DM article on Universal Credit:
“Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said: ‘There’s a range of technical and design problems that Labour’s going to have to rescue after 2015.’”
THEY will have to ? Says who, exactly ? One might almost be led to believe that the next General Election is already rigged in their favour or convinced that the 3 main parties are…and have always been…”all in it together”.
Hmmmm….
The hubris is staggering.
Of course Andy Burnham has no idea! He’s never had a real job has he?
Another one of those left wing political geek children who joined Labour before he even went to University, and has done nothing but party slop-work ever since.
I doubt if Burnham has even met a working person who’s worked outside the unionised public services. He’s as useless as tits on a bull.
Another alarming aspect is
“his own plan to merge social care for the elderly and the infirm, often controlled by local authorities, with the NHS, which he says will save money and improve standards.”
As if the incompetent, ideologically driven DH was not powerful enough?
I agree with your admirably concise assessment of Burnham.
More talk of the ‘living wage’ in that article too. Another policy that will create unemployment, price more young people out of work and increase the cost of living.
“Another policy that will create unemployment, price more young people out of work and increase the cost of living.”
Translation: my employers at the CBI are very happy having our payroll subsidised by the tax payer with an unrealistically low minimum wage.
Look for the money. Always. Employers benefit hugely by having a a low minimum wage with its being topped up by benefits. Naturally their shills will argue vociferously against any change in that comfy and profitable status quo.
Libertarian conservative supports abusive employment practices shocker. Colour me stunned.
Zero hours contracts are the plague that sustains job insecurity and poor pay. They are an inevitable result of giving employers power at the expense of employees and the weakening of the trades unions. They are what we on the left warned would happen were Thatcherism to become ascendant, as it now has: a return to pre-war employment practices where men would queue up outside the factory waiting to see who would be chosen. In such an environment, bullying and coercion is commonplace. Make a complaint about dangerous or healthy work practices and you’ll get no more work. Be unavailable when you are called for work, say goodbye to getting any more work from that source. Many are also a restrain of trade by requiring that their workers remain exclusively contracted to that operator
With a zero hours contract it is impossible to budget as pay will fluctuate from week to week, which is why we have seen the growth of the pay day load shark, as such workers borrow against next week’s pay to top up a low week.
As always, the experience will be less onerous the more skilled the “employee” is. Employees with more marketable skills will be able to protect themselves better and will find that operators will offer them better conditions. Those most vulnerable are unskilled people and they are those who most need protection.
If Labour have turned against the zero hours contract then it will be a major rejection of Blairite scum politics, for it was Labour under Blair that allowed zero hour contracts to be advertised in Job Centres, which previously the Tories had banned. After finding Labour anathema for 20 years, it is beginning to look like an alternative to authoritarian corporatism. Small steps, sure, and it’s got a long, long way to go before it reject neo-liberal tyranny, but an important first step.
Lefty supports authoritarian interference in voluntary agreements shocker.
I can assure you that I do not live with mummy and daddy, so the arrangement I have with my five employers is not for children. What that fucking parasitic cretin Andy Burnahm – and you, it seems – fail to grasp is that there are some roles where full time employment with one employer is neither practicable nor desirable. Mine is a case in point. None of my employers has enough work to support me alone. Between them, I can earn a decent living. I have, therefore entered into fully voluntarily, zero hour agreements. It suits me and I like it and I deeply resent people like Burnham assuming that it is any of their business. Besides, I don’t particularly want to work for one employer on a full time contract.
I mean, seriously do you think that banning the practice will, in any way improve the lot of the low paid? If you do, you are deluding yourself. Some jobs will simply disappear. Others will get creative to find a workaround. Create more jobs it won’t. And, no, it is not abusive.
“Lefty supports authoritarian interference in voluntary agreements shocker”
Rejecting authoritarian and abusive employment practices is not “authoritarian”
“What that fucking parasitic cretin Andy Burnahm – and you, it seems – fail to grasp is that there are some roles where full time employment with one employer is neither practicable nor desirable”
Yeah, yeah, libertarian solipsism rules OK. Such roles exist because employers are too fucking idle and incompetent to work out their manpower needs. The low paid zero hours contract is a major reason why our benefits bill is so large. I do not see why i should pay large amounts of tax to sustain parasitical employers milking antediluvian employment practices.
“Some jobs will simply disappear”
No, you’ve just bought the propaganda. The need for the work will still exist as it did before. Employers will just have to manage themselves more competently and decide beforehand how many hours they wish to purchase.
I haven’t bought anything. I can recognise interference in voluntary agreements when I see it and this one has flashing neon lights all over it. Yes, it suits me and it is no one else’s fucking business – especially arsehole parasitic politicians.
Kneejerk claptrap on stilts. How we live our lives and the contracts we voluntarily enter into is nothing to do with politicians. Fuck all to do with solipsism.
No, they do not and in saying so, you demonstrate crass ignorance. My work is an example of one that many people need, but few need on a regular – let alone full time – basis, so I work for a number of people in order to make a living. it works for me and it works for them.
And, yes, banning perfectly reasonable mutually agreed arrangements is deeply authoritarian. I am not being abused by anyone. When I worked at Sainsbury’s, I entered into a 21 hour contract that on its own would not be a sustainable full time wage. I did so voluntarily – seeking other work to make up the difference, until such time as I could leave them and resume my training career. I used them as much as they used me.
I do not need and certainly do not want Andy Burnham’s “protection”.
Fuck me, get real. My employers often don’t know how much work they need to buy until the last minute – because, you see, in the real world their clients often work on tight time-scales buying services when they need them (sometimes they are too late and I have to turn them down as I’m already booked, in which case; too bad). Sometimes I might not work for an employer for weeks at a time, sometimes they need me for several days or even weeks in succession. That’s how the real world works, unlike the rarefied ideal one that socialists live in. Bugger all to do with competence and everything to do with keeping the customer satisfied.