The casualisation of work leaves many on zero-hours contracts unable or unwilling to access existing employment rights (Editorial, 26 February). A common theme of callers to the Working Families helpline is stress and uncertainty; they are unable to predict how much they will earn in any week. This causes problems for budgeting week to week as well as planning ahead for maternity pay. Many callers complain that, although they have no guaranteed hours, the employer tells them that if they are unable to work a particular shift they won’t be offered any more work. One care worker with a disabled child, who could not work certain nights, was told by her employer, “If I’d have known about your problems [her child] at the start I wouldn’t have employed you.” A pregnant caller had her hours reduced and given to new staff, as the employer said they “need people they can rely on”.
Callers often feel they do not have any right to complain of less favourable treatment, or they fear that if they do assert their rights they will no longer be offered work.
Sarah Jackson
Chief executive officer, Working Families
• Your endorsement of Labour proposals to force employers to offer steady work to zero-hours staff after six months is shoddy thinking. Were the idea made law, all an employer would have to do to evade it is stop giving employees any work shortly before the six months are up, then take on others in their place.
I’ve been doing zero-hours work for 42 years and am only ever just a silent telephone away from wipe-out. Security gains in law to my self-employed status in that time? Nil. Every single holiday and sick-leave taken? Unpaid.
Much more radical reinvention of our labour law is needed, not this tepid tinkering with the injustices that prevail in the working life of Britain.
John Pepper
Lancaster
