Zero Hours Contracts

[mikey4444]

At last the truth is beginning to creep out ::::

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23570345

I was listening to the Today program this morning and a care worker was being interviewed. She said, amongst other things, that she wasn't paid for her time travelling between her patients and that this resulted in her total pay being below the minimum wage. How can this be allowed ? Minimum wage laws were brought in to stop this kind of exploitation of workers.

It would seem to me that the whole issue of zero hours contracts should be looked at with some urgency, with a view to outlawing them asap.

[factor-fiction]

>"I'm unsure why zero hour contracts are even allowed."

I'm not sure people understand what these contracts are. I effectively have a zero hours contract because I work for an agency.

Is O_G suggesting we ban agency working too?

[Peter Pedant]

Hi 3T

The revenue or fiscal law on this is as follows:

Every employment has a base camp. This is usually your usual place of employ. If you are paid for costs to and fro base camp this is taxable.

But you may as part of your contract go and work elsewhere.
Travel between these two places are in fact deemed to be expenses and are therefore not taxable (as the money you have spent on doing it already has lad tax paid on it.) PAYE rules

Self employed - the rules are the same but you dont usually have a base camp so all travelling costs are all claimable against tax - which is why self employed people pay 2% of the tax taking of this govt (no they dont pay 2% tax.....lots of them dont pay any! hur hurh hur)


I dont doubt that this is an intended effect of the employers( using zero hr contracts .

when I was on employment cttees, I used to point at the admin and say: of course the advantages of zero hour contracts are such that you admin mgrs are all on them yourselves, arent you ?
and I used to wartch their well filled trousers shuffle in their upholstered armchairs.

cdnt wait for me to retire ( and neither could I)

[pixie373]

I think, factor, it should just be made clearer that you can turn down work, too. We weren't allowed to. Also, we should have been allowed to join more than one agency. We were not only stopped from doing that, but had to sign to say we wouldn't work for a competitor for a year after leaving. If you're a carer, you do care work and anyone, really, could be called a "competitor".

[factor-fiction]

Thanks pixie. We'll I'm puzzled then because that doesn't match my understanding of zero hours contracts.

This ACAS site for example says employees are NOT obliged to accept work:
http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=3886


“Generally, as an employer, you are not obliged to offer work to workers on zero-hours contracts - but nor are they obliged to accept any work you offer.”

Of course if an employee regularly turns down work they will find they are not wanted. The same generally applies to agency workers. Agency working and zero hours contracts suit some employees and not others. At the moment I prefer agency working but if it stopped suiting me I'd look for a longer term contract


I would be interested to see some input from someone with solid employment law experience such as buildersmate.

[Old_Geezer]

To ask the question you must've missed some of my posts FF.

[factor-fiction]

Thanks O-G. I disagree that zero-hours contracts should be outlawed. I do agree that there needs to be better regulation of how some employers operate and take advantage of people who feel they have no alternative. But I still think the principle of zero hours is fine- it is as I have said very similar to agency working where there is no guarantee of work or compulsion to take what's offered. It should be better than agency work for some since the location is usually fixed for zero hours contracts whereas agency workers may be with different places each day