Zero hours contracts

[Dominic Connor]

The core problem is not that employers abuse staff, but that can employers *can* abuse staff.

My wife is a lawyer, she's on effectively a zero hours contract, as a partner in huge law firm her last contract said she could be terminated without notice "for any reason or none" and of course with her clients don't guarantee to engage her either.

But she is of course treated well and paid well because she is highly skilled and more than able to stand up for herself both legally and because of her character.

I've engaged IT contractors on zero hours as well and they've been very happy about it, this basically being "on call" to look after a system they built but didn't need someone on site once it went live. I had more power than them, but this was balanced by my need to get stuff done and them being the best guys to do it.

Thus zero hours is not of itself bad, but people on low pay are by necessity in inferior negotiation positions and there is a viable question on what outside forces should do about them.

I reject the idea that there are many jobs where it is rational for an employer to treat employees like dirt because they are easily replaced.

The fact is that any job can be done worse, which helps me understand why it seems so many Zeroes are to be found in government work, where quality is not an important parameter, but where apparent( not real) cost is paramount.

I believe that what we have here is what economists call "agency theory", the difference between what people are paid to do and what they actually do.

Zero hours is the sort of thing that makes a bean counter or mid level manager look good to his bosses, since it has a clear saving whereas quality is often a bit harder to pin down and can be blamed on other factors. This is not good for the firm as a whole as recent G4S incidents have shown. Their mid level management tried variations on low pay and zero hours and even in a recession found that they couldn't find people skilled enough to stand in a car park all day pretending to do security.

That may not be skilled work, but is bloody tough. Car parks in summer can be very hot (or wet or both), wearing a thick, badly made uniform for 12 hours standing up is something most people physically could not do.

G4S got a kicking for that, but the guy who decided to go for low rates and zero hours for the security guards go a bonus.

This means legistlation is unlikely to achieve much.

[CoolCat]

Re "I reject the idea that there are many jobs where it is rational for an employer to treat employees like dirt because they are easily replaced."

You ever been inside one of the big Indian IT outsourcers? I have. It would take me a long time to explain just how badly they routinely treat their staff. Racism is normal, bullying and harassment is normal. Racism and harassment are already illegal - it hasnt stopped them doing it!

The Indian IT outsourcers are doing very well financially out of these practises.

[tractor]

The core problem is not that employers abuse staff, but that can employers *can* abuse staff.

My wife is a lawyer, she's on effectively a zero hours contract, as a partner in huge law firm her last contract said she could be terminated without notice "for any reason or none" and of course with her clients don't guarantee to engage her either.

But she is of course treated well and paid well because she is highly skilled and more than able to stand up for herself both legally and because of her character.

I've engaged IT contractors on zero hours as well and they've been very happy about it, this basically being "on call" to look after a system they built but didn't need someone on site once it went live. I had more power than them, but this was balanced by my need to get stuff done and them being the best guys to do it.

Thus zero hours is not of itself bad, but people on low pay are by necessity in inferior negotiation positions and there is a viable question on what outside forces should do about them.

I reject the idea that there are many jobs where it is rational for an employer to treat employees like dirt because they are easily replaced.

The fact is that any job can be done worse, which helps me understand why it seems so many Zeroes are to be found in government work, where quality is not an important parameter, but where apparent( not real) cost is paramount.

I believe that what we have here is what economists call "agency theory", the difference between what people are paid to do and what they actually do.

Zero hours is the sort of thing that makes a bean counter or mid level manager look good to his bosses, since it has a clear saving whereas quality is often a bit harder to pin down and can be blamed on other factors. This is not good for the firm as a whole as recent G4S incidents have shown. Their mid level management tried variations on low pay and zero hours and even in a recession found that they couldn't find people skilled enough to stand in a car park all day pretending to do security.

That may not be skilled work, but is bloody tough. Car parks in summer can be very hot (or wet or both), wearing a thick, badly made uniform for 12 hours standing up is something most people physically could not do.

G4S got a kicking for that, but the guy who decided to go for low rates and zero hours for the security guards go a bonus.

This means legistlation is unlikely to achieve much.

Should be amended to 'couldn't find people who were desperate or stupid enough...' FTFY

[doodab]

I reject the idea that there are many jobs where it is rational for an employer to treat employees like dirt because they are easily replaced.

If that were the case slavery would never have evolved and wouldn't be as prevalent as it is. I'm sure game theory has a good explanation for why things are the way they are.

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

The employment contract between an umbrella and the contractor is normally a zero hour contract. Indeed the hourly rate is normally minimum wage too. The rest is just paid as bonus if and when the agency or end client pays the umbrella. etc.

Not if it's a compliant umbrella company it's not

[Dominic Connor]

If that were the case slavery would never have evolved and wouldn't be as prevalent as it is. I'm sure game theory has a good explanation for why things are the way they are.

Game theory in the form of agency theory does indeed explain it.

It's instructive to see how human slaves are treated relative to animals.

A human costs quite a bit to run and typically you have to buy them, making a human cost considerably more than (say) a horse.
We see that that slaves are treated very badly, going beyond not caring about them, but mistreating them to the point where you get less productivity. In the Caribbean, slaves were treated so badly that the diseases bred in appalling conditions actually killed off a lot of the white people as well.

Then we look at places with slavery and their economic development. Slavery has never been legal in England, it was only legal in the Empire and a consequence of the industrial revolution was that human labour lost value against capital in the form of machines.

Yes, I'm a Thatcherite, quoting Marx (but not Engels), live with it.

In the Southern States of the USA, there was huge resistance to industrialisation, they started a war with the North with almost no steel mills, a bit of a problem for a war in the mid 19th century. There was also a strong culture of slavery and its clear the slave owners liked having slaves and didn't get the same kick from machines. In reading 18th and 19th century culture it is clear that in Britain the same class of capital endowed elite enjoyed having big machines even when in some cases human labour was still more efficient.

It's clear that slave owners frequently enjoyed abusing their power over people. Would you whip a steam engine ? Starve an expensive horse ?

The US civil was was not about the morality of slavery, the South wanted to protect its industries from globalisation because a slave based economy could not compete against the highly mechanised Northern states or Britain or Germany. A core and critical part of the US constitution is that you can't have trade barriers within the union, this is a big reason for the growth and power of the USA, but this was at the expense of "protecting local business" which ends up with basket cases like 1970s Britain or 21st century Greece.

You will note that my analysis of slavery isn't about the morality, just how people make decisions.

But that "protection" suits very well an elite whose utility is gained at the price of screwing with everyone else.

South Africa under apartheid was not for the direct benefit of the elite, nor was it really about racial superiority, it was about racial inferiority. The average Afrikaner knew that in a free labour market, he was screwed since even the most dedicated white supremacist would have to accept white South African as an exception to that rule. Thus the political elite not only prevented blacks and coloured people from competing (Chinese were coloured, Japanese were white because they invested heavily there), but als rigged the education system so that even an Afrikaner looked good in comparison.

This was terrible for the economy as a whole, even without sanctions which had little effect, if you compare resource-rich white-run former British colonies like Canada or Australia with South Africa the economy was pitiful, whereas Ozzies and Canucks became as rich or richer than Brits, S.Africa's economy was less successful than that of Greece, or indeed any civilised country.

But it kept the ruling political elite in power because amongst white people S.Africa was a full democracy and the people who couldn't compete with the local blacks voted for whoever would protect them from competition.

That's why the racism we see from unions and the Daily Mail is rational, both cater for people who know that if the competition in the UK job market increases they will sink because they aren't smart enough to compete, or have let what skills they have decay. They don't believe coloured people are inferior, they fear that they are smarter. The fact that most immigrants to the UK are white is actually worse for these racial inferiorists because they can't kid themselves that being white gives them an edge.

[EternalOptimist]

The American civil war was about states right vs federal power. The issues that provided the spark are many and varied, slavery being one of them.

And there was slavery in England, it depends on how far back you want to go

[BlueSharp]

I think linking zero hour contracts to slavery is over kill. You can quit the contract and find another, or retrain and get a more stable contract offer. You cant do either in slavery.

I worked zero hour contracts for six years as a student and they worked well, especially over the holidays and exam time when I did not want to work.

[NotAllThere]

I think linking zero hour contracts to slavery is over kill. You can quit the contract and find another, or retrain and get a more stable contract offer. You cant do either in slavery.

I worked zero hour contracts for six years as a student and they worked well, especially over the holidays and exam time when I did not want to work.

The link to slavery was to demonstrate that treating your workers badly (which has more scope in zero-hour contracts) is likely to be uneconomic.

[psychocandy]

Zero hour contracts = really bad. Just an excuse for minimum paid workers to get treated even more like tulipe. Like someone said, employers can and often do treat the worker like tulipe knowing if they kick off they can just get someone else in.

I know someone who regularly gets calls with an hours notice pretty much saying, you're working today. No asking. If worker says no that's pretty much it for their job.
Then again, same person was also scheduled to work for the day, turned up to be told sorry don't need you now you can go home. Sod that.

How many of us would put up with that for £100s/day let alone minimum wage?