Linda Riordan: Zero-hours exploitation of working people

Moreover, zero-hours contracts are immoral, they exploit hard-working people and they enable the powerful to dominate the powerless. In Halifax, unemployment levels are very high, job security is low and youth unemployment has almost doubled in the last three years. That appears to me to be a licence for some employers to introduce zero-hours contracts.

What most people want – like the rest of us – is stability, security and reassurance in employment. What zero-hours contracts provide is exactly the opposite. Some say, “Is such a contract not better than no job at all?”, but that misses the point. Many advances in employment practices would never have been made in the last 100 years if the “status quo” option had always been taken. Only recently, the very same argument was used to warn of the dangers of the minimum wage.

This is obviously not a stable time to be in employment, especially in northern towns. They have borne the brunt of the Government’s cuts, which have affected both public and private sector jobs.

There are many well-run companies and decent employers in both those sectors in the town that I represent. They include J&C Joel and Harveys. They care about their employees, they know what it is like to manage a budget and they want to keep the town on an even keel. So when I talk about zero-hours contracts, I should add that not all companies in my constituency are practising this policy, but sadly it is an increasing trend, and, quite simply, they are an unethical and unwanted means of employing people. They are an employers’ charter to make shortcuts, reduce wage bills and avoid employment rights obligations.

I know there are various contract laws that prevent an outright ban, but they should be outlawed. Things can – and should – be done to water down the opportunity for them to be used. We need to look at guaranteeing hours and extending statutory employee rights to all workers, whatever contracts they are on. All workers should have trade union rights and family-friendly rights. Equality in employment should not be decided by a worker’s contract.

It is in times of economic hardship that employers exploit and those without a voice do not get listened to. This is exactly the time when we should be doing more to protect those hard-working people we constantly hear about in soundbites, but who are actually ignored because of the lack of sound policies.

This Government is actually on the wrong side for hard-working people. I know of a company in Halifax.

A very hard-working young man came to my last surgery. He had been made redundant and had his benefits cut. He was living off family. He wanted to work and was given a zero-hours contract and told to turn up every morning at 6am.

The company has a board and if a person’s name is not on it, they are sent home and told to come back the day after – after they have spent money on travel. This young man so much wanted a job that he said: “Please don’t send me home. I’ve travelled all this way and spent money getting here. Can I sweep up today? I’ll do anything.”

He was told: “No, your name’s not on that board. Come again tomorrow.” It is not rocket science to find a way to let people know the day before – or the week before, in my opinion – whether there is work for them.

That is a long-established company. It has not been around for just two minutes and is on a budget. It knows exactly how many employees it wants but it keeps people dangling. These are Dickensian practices that would be out of place in Victorian England, let alone 2013.

There are thousands and thousands of people, many in my Halifax constituency, who are exploited in this way, with lower wages, fewer holidays, no sick pay and fewer rights, and who are unaware of their employment status. The employers are in a dominant position and they know it. We have come a long way in improving working conditions in this country over many years, but clearly the journey still has a long way to go.

When people look back in years to come, I think they will look at the exploitative policies of zero-hours contracts and find it hard to believe that in 2013 such practices were in place as a means of suppressing workers who need and deserve better. For my Halifax constituents, and those across the country, we need to do more to end the shabby practice of zero-hours contracts that have no place in a society that deems itself to be a progressive one.

*Linda Riordan is the Labour MP for Halifax who spoke in a House of Commons debate on zero-hours contracts. This is an edited version.