Disadvantages Of Zero Hour Contracts

It is estimated that stress causes the UK economy around £7 billion a year, of which £4 billion is as a result of the 180 million working days lost due to staff taking time off work. As such the importance, if not purely on a financial basis, can be seen to

If the workplace of today could be characterized by a single theme, it would most likely focus on the continual presence of change. Dramatic changes in technology, the marketplace and the workforce have compelled organizations to re-evaluate not only the competitiveness of their products, but also the core ways in which work is performed. It is out of this pursuit for continued survival that organizations have been faced with the notion of varying work-schedules beyond the traditional hours of nine to five. This paper will explore the societal and business changes that have led to a proliferation in flexible work patterns. This paper will also address the benefits and disadvantages of flexible work patterns for

“An investigation to explore how the management of zero hours contracts affects the employees of Abercrombie & Fitch – London”

This paper focuses on the effect that temporary employment such as zero hour contracts have on the wellbeing of employees, it gives a brief definition of what a zero hour contract is, and how they have changed throughout the years eg how they were used in previous years before being called zero hour contracts, why the use of zero hour contracts is on the rise in the UK business market, and investigates the benefits and detriments of these contracts in regards to employees, it will also look at the financial benefits to the employers who use these contracts, and the type of culture that surrounds the employees who are employed on these contracts, It will also investigate what the

The report is based on responses collected from more than 1000 employers and 2000 employees, considered UK workforce only and was conducted in early January 2012. The report presents an in-depth view of the types of flexible working provisions offered by employers including part-time working, working from home, flexitime, compressed hours, career breaks/sabbaticals, mobile working, term-time working, secondments, annual hours and time off work in the community.

In the technical sense, penalty rates are a form of tangible benefit within the financial context which generally refers to those payments made to workers outside normal working hours. Regulator motivations for including penalty rates in modern awards as stated by (Sloane, 2014) are twofold: firstly, to compensate workers for work performed during what was historically known as ‘unsociable hours’ and secondly, to dissuade employers from operating within those hours. However, as advocated by (Sheldon & Thornthwaite, 2013) the modern award reviews have ‘provided a forum for employers and their associations to escalate their campaign to the significance of penalty rates in industries operating during the traditionally ‘unsociable hours’, which is evidence that employer associations prefer to enhance managerial prerogative over productivity which is predominantly concerned with the cost of resources. The push for the examination of provisions regarding penalty rates has mostly been seen to affect the tourism and retail industries.

Statistical research by Eslake (2011) has established that for the last decade Australia has been experiencing a decline in overall productivity. This supports the main thrust of the lobbyists, who argue that rigid organisational pay and working conditions create an inflexible organisation which is not able to compete in the international environment. They argue that there is a direct correlation between increased organisational flexibility and productivity, and a number of large organisations in Australia have suggested that barriers to productivity include a lack of flexibility, increasing penalty rates, and restrictions on the use of contractors (Todd, 2012:350). They believe that these inhibitors should be addressed in amendments to the FWA in order to secure a productive future for Australia and the workforce in general.

This paper focuses on the effect that temporary employment such as zero hour contracts have on the wellbeing of employees, it gives a brief definition of what a zero hour contract is, and how they have changed throughout the years eg how they were used in previous years before being called zero hour contracts, why the use of zero hour contracts is on the rise in the UK business market, and investigates the benefits and detriments of these contracts in regards to employees, it will also look at the financial benefits to the employers who use these contracts, and the type of culture that surrounds the employees who are employed on these contracts, It will also investigate

According to Matthew Pennycook, Giselle Cory, Vidhya Alakeson (June 2013) Zero-hours contracts permit a boss to augment the adaptability of their workforce to all the more effectively conform to varieties popular.

A major advantage to the employer is the increasing power that he/she gains over the employees with zero hour contracts (Griffin, 2013). Thirdly, it is to a great extend the best backup plan to a sudden change and the solution to last-minute events (Pyper and Dar, 2015). It is also the resolution to temporary employees’ shortages (Hotel Industry Magazine, 2014). Other than that, zero-hour contract gives the employer the opportunity to employ more, which results to producing more (Hotel Industry Magazine, 2014). Due to cheap labor, it allows the coverage of various geographical locations at the same time (Freeman, 2015). This means more supply, which equals more profit. Before changes in the organisational behavior, elders were not allowed to work, which meant that their skills would not be used (Norton Rose Fulbright, 2013). However, with zero hour contracts, elders’ skills are retained and employers can benefit from their experiences (Shoesmith, 2015). In many cases, zero hour contracts employ a pool of trained and talented staff who know how the business cooperates and its procedures (Shoesmith, 2015). Consequently, this type of contracts is profitable to the employers. With this being said, zero hour contracts have no disadvantages on employers.

The recovery from the 2008/09 recessions though weak has seen increases in headline employment, implying that the labour market recovery is quite impressive and unanticipated considering the slower recovery in output. Trends in underemployment, self-employment, youth-unemployment (caused by displacement effect ) and insecure forms of working (zero-hour contracts1) have been obscured by headline statistic (Boyd, 2014). This is so because employers rather than lay-off workers decide to fall wages and/or cut working hours (labour hoarding1), thereby resulting in deteriorating employment quality and decreased economic security of jobs. This culminates in underemployment, leaving unemployment relatively constant with falling

| They are employed to meet the short term demand for staff. They are entitled to a core of employment rights, ie national minimum wage, breaks, annual leave and 48 hour working week and are entitled to a healthy and safe working environment.

Houseman and Polivka (1998) said the employer’s use of temporary, part-time and contract employment is widely accepted, and it is supported to maintain workplace flexibility (Houseman and Polivka, 1998). How employees can be used properly is very essential in any firms. Moreover, many argue that it could translate into less job security and bring unfairness for workers (U.S. Department of Labor, 1999). The biggest challenge Primark encounters is employees are precariously arranged at

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 697,000 workers were employed on zero - hours contracts for their main job from October to December in the year 2014, which is 2. 3 % of the UK labor force based on data from the Labor Force Survey. The reason why employers use zero – hours contracts is that they allow employers to hire workers in response to the fluctuating need for their services in such sectors as hospitality, according to the BBC News on Business (2015).

The literatures that have been gathered and observed by researchers, scholars from all over the world has succeeded in pointing out that fixed-term contracts employment is a new phenomenon in the labour society.