Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite says….
Zero-hours contracts create a throwaway workforce.
They form a one-way street, whereby employers bear no risk, avoiding sickness and holiday pay and overtime.
Victoria Derbyshire was conducting a phone-in asking what it is you like about Zero Hour Contracts.
Plenty of people do like them, like the felxibility and how they fit in with their lifestyle.
One question raised though was how large multi-national organisations could justify using them…say Sports Direct for example in its shops.
Derbyshire read out a text raising that issue and then ironically immediately a caller came on (11:23) who described his position as a ‘casual’ or freelancer…but he said the difference between that and a ZHC was merely from a tax point of view and he was effectively on a ZHC.
He ‘worked’ for a large international organisation, the BBC, amongst other independent production companies who operate the same system.
He gets no sick pay and no training and if he is booked by the BBC for example, every wednesday for 3 months and refuses other work because of that, and then the BBC cancels he has lost out on other work.
He gets notice of work from say 3 months to 1 day…but the work can be cancelled the day before he is due to start.
The BBC apparently has no policy statement on just what the terms of these ‘contracts’ are and how they should operate.
He said there were thousands of people being employed in the same way by the BBC on a daily basis and it is the usual practice throughout the industry.
He says there is no duty of care to ensure the people on ZHC are treated decently….the BBC has no written policy that sets out their duty of care to its army of casuals.
The BBC, being the BBC, you might have thought would have such a policy, in triplicate. You can see why the industry employs casuals due to the way production works but when people get no sick pay, holiday pay, no training, work cancelled with no pay the day before it begins you might have thought there might be a case for some sort of fallback system of payment to compensate…a retention fee or similar.
Sure Ed Miliband is on the job. If Lenny Henry can get the DG’s ear sure the Leader of the Opposition can as well and the BBC Trust will issue recomendations asap.
The BBC, perhaps somewhat disengenuously, says in response to a FOI request:
Dear Mr Count,
Apologies if our previous response was not clear enough.
I can confirm that your statement below is correct; the BBC does not employ any staff at all on zero hours contracts.
Yours sincerely,
The Information Policy and Compliance Team
BBC Information Policy and Compliance
BC2B6, Broadcast Centre
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TP, UK
It seems the BBC prefers to call them ‘flexi-contracts’…it does seem to have some sort of policy:
‘The BBC does not employ staff on zero-hours contracts. We offer staff minimum hours contracts which differ as they specify a minimum number of days or hours work individuals are contracted for.
By way of background information, it may be helpful to add that minimum hours contracts are
commonplace in broadcasting and other industries across the UK. They are used to help with temporary
fluctuations in workload. A person engaged on this basis is free to accept or refuse work at any time.’
Our policy says:
BBC Guaranteed Minimum Work contracts (also known as ‘flexi contracts’)
This contract is suitable when the requirement for the individual is for a defined number of days or hours over a limited period which are to be worked as the business requires (e.g. fixed hours per week/month cannot be predicted or guaranteed). The contract is simply a form of the BBC Fixed Term contract.
Managers are required to indicate the realistic minimum number of hours/days which can
be predicted over the contracted period e.g. 30 days per year. Managers should review the minimum number of contracted hours/days regularly to ensure that the employee is contracted to the appropriate minimum.
The employee may be asked to work additional hours or days above those stated in their contract,
however there is no obligation on the BBC to offer the additional hours or days or an obligation on the employee to work those offered. Any additional hours or days worked do not count towards contractual benefits, e.g. holiday or sickness accrual.
It says ‘guaranteed minimum work contract’ but that isn’t how the caller described the way the operation worked…offered work being cancelled, sometimes the day before it was due to commence.
Perhaps this is the answer….a guarantee of some days by the BBC but additional days have no such guarantee:
BBC Contracts of Employment Policy
The employee may be asked to work additional hours or days above those stated in their contract, however there is no obligation on the BBC to offer the additional hours or days or an obligation on the employee to work those offered. Any additional hours or days worked do not count towards contractual benefits, e.g. holiday or sickness accrual.
In theory a ‘Guaranteed Minimum Hour Contract’ isn’t a ‘Zero Hours Contract’…because at least you have a guaranteed number of hours in a fixed period….however there seems quite a bit of wriggle room for managers to change that making nothing certain for an employee…and there is that ‘appropriate minimum’…which could be zero hours in effect.
Presumably you get paid for those ‘guaranteed minimum’ days even if you don’t work them…but it didn’t sound like that was the case from the caller’s description.
So all is not entirely clear just how the BBC uses ‘casual’ staff…..but in essence there seems little difference between the BBC contracts and ZHCs……there would still be a lot of uncertainty for any BBC casual/freelancer and a wage that is unlikely to meet the ‘living wage’ criteria…and of course there is no other option in the choice of contract if you are in a position that means this is the only work you have.
They can’t see the hypocrisy can they? Unreal
No contract. No holidays. No sick leave. No say over hours. No freedom to go anywhere else.
Seem to recall we used to have something just like that in the past.
Oh that was it.
Slavery.
The devil is in the detail
‘The BBC does not employ staff on zero-hours contracts. ‘
That is it does not ’employ’ staff on zero hours contracts of service.
But do they ‘engage’ people on on zero hour contracts for services ?
The use of bogus self employed status is wide spread in the construction industry and has been for many years
It allows the the employer to side step employment law
and liability and employers N.I. contribution .It also allows the the employee to avoid paying tax and NI though for most lower payed workers any advantage wiped out by losses in terms of notice requirement an Holiday pay.
After many years of campaigning by the construction unions the inland revenue’s compliance department finally clamped down on this in the 1990s ( though I suspect the huge losses to the Exchequer from tax an N.I. had more to do with it they anything else) by applying that ‘of services’ Vs for services test.
The employers soon got round this by requiring the skin barons to supply workers who had registered as companies with only one employee themselves.(hence all those Bulgarian construction ‘start ups’ Danny)
For a long while ,in my naivety I wondered why we couldn’t get the fauxcialist press interested in this abuse of employment law then I woke up to the fact that most senior journalists are on the lump.