Zero hour contracts

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Introduction

Zero hour contracts are an alternate for the organization to hire staff temporarily and pay them when work is needed. A ‘zero hour contract‘ does not have a legal definition however, Barnett & Scrope (2008) define  as “It is a day to day name for a contract under which the employer does not guarantee to provide work and pays only for work actually done.”

In this regard, zero hour contracts do not bound the employer to hire employees full time, so there is no guarantee of work but rather the employer can call upon the staff only when needed and pay them only for the work done and not pay when they are not needed.

Additionally,  can have the potential for abuse as they can deprive the staff of benefits they would be otherwise eligible for had they been employed full time.

In this way, zero hour contracts have given the employees the flexibility to not be exclusive to single jobs but rather can commit themselves to multiple  to potentially maximize their earnings, as the case may be.

However, with  comes the risk of potential abuse of these by the employer, worker status may not be given to the staff depriving them of potential worker benefits, such as right to a minimum wage, the status of those under  become ambiguous as it not a permanent or fixed hour job.

Zero hour contracts are not the solution, at least at the time being, to both employee or employer but rather a temporary fix on way for a more permanent solution. Regulation of these contracts would go a long way to ensure that these contracts are used properly and are not abused.

Having said the above, this research aims to gauge the perception of a sample of 100 individuals to whether  are viewed favorably or not and whether the sample would be in the favor of regulation of these contracts.

The answers from the questionnaire derived on these aims would help in establishing a perception of zero hour contracts and how they could potentially be improved….