Zero Hours Contracts....

Isnt the problem with zero or low hours contracts that it enables employers to take the pith?

The first I heard of zero hours contracts was when my wife was offered a new job and was considering leaving theone she has at the moment.

Until then I had no idea that such a thing existed.

When I read her letter it said that no hours were guaranteed, and told her not to accept it - which she didn't.

I don't agree with letting employers send people home when it suits them.
I think it is totally disrespectful to expect workers to go home early losing money when they left their house to work for the day.

I work for agencies and we are always paid for 8 hours minimum even if we show up somewhere and we only work 4 hours for the client, for example..

There are 2 sides to the argument. There should be a sense of fairness for both parties, both employer and employee.

It isnt right that an employee should be expected to pay to get into work, travel a distance and then released after an hour.

I think its laughable that a Milliband government would even mention banning zero-hour contracts when members of his own front-bench team and 68 Labour back-benchers all employ staff using them. Council workers in his own constituency, Doncaster, are among the 22,000 employed by Labour run councils on zero-hour contracts. Brown's government pretty much promoted them in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008.

i heard stories--a few years back--of youngsters on zero hours contracts----having to wait--unpaid--in a staff room of a burger joint---on the off chance of being paid to work sometime that day.

so they couldnt be working anywhere else.

That is so wrong.

Is that true?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract
United Kingdom[edit]
In the United Kingdom, under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, workers operating under a zero-hour contract on stand-by time, on-call time, and downtime must be paid the national minimum wage for hours worked. Prior to the introduction of the Working Time Regulations 1998 and the National Minimum Wage Regulations 1999 zero-hour contracts were sometimes used to "clock-off" staff during quiet periods while retaining them on site so they could be returned to paid work should the need arise. The National Minimum Wage Regulations now require that employers pay the national minimum wage for the time workers are required to be at the workplace even if there is no "work" to do.[9][10]Some employees subject to a zero-hour contract have in some cases[11] been told that they are required to obtain permission of their employer before accepting other work.[6] InAutoclenz Ltd v Belcher [2011] UKSC 41, the UK Supreme Court delivered a groundbreaking judgment on workers who were on a zero hour contract. Lord Clarke held, at paragraph 35, that in employment relations which are characterised by inequality of bargaining power, the written terms of a contract may not in truth represent what was the contract in law. In 2013 , the reasoning in Autoclenz was applied by Supperstone J in the Employment Appeal Tribunal[12] to hold that a security guard who was given a zero hours contract was entitled to a stable working pattern: the contract's written terms were invalid. Together, this indicates that all zero hours contracts are potentially unlawful, and would entitle all workers to sue their employers for an unlawful deduction of wages if they are willing and able to work.[13]

This was brought up in the ITV debate in a question to Miliband.