Résumé Zero Hours Contract Anglais

The United Kingdom of zero-hours workers

Estimations resulting from a poll commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) are rather alarming: over one million UK workers may be employed under zero-hours contracts.

This type of contract relies on the absence of a set minimum of hours, and therefore of a set minimum wage. Meanwhile, employees are expected to be on call and available to resume work at short notice, without the guarantee of having benefits such as holiday or sick pay.

The impact of such contracts on the work conditions and standard of living of Brits seems to have been at least partially ignored. Today, zero-hours workers do not really take advantage of the flexibility their contracts offer, and mostly accept them out of lack of better options. As a result, they have to live day by day and are unable to make long-term or even medium-term plans.

Employers have even been accused of pressuring their potential recruits into accepting this type of contracts. Workers have little to no room for complaint, and they give in to these pressures out of fear of being quickly replaced.

According to the survey published in the August 5th 2013 edition of The Guardian, all sectors of the working population are dealing with these contracts, sometimes even in the most qualified positions.

Among some of the most revealing numbers found in the article are the percentages of zero-hours contracts by sector:

- 34% of employees in non-profit organizations.

- 24% in the public sector.

- 17% in the private sector.

The industries where zero-hours contracts are most common are hotels, catering and leisure, where 48% of companies include at least one worker under this type of contract. Education is second with 35%, while healthcare comes in third place at 27%.

Several companies are cited as maybe over-relying on zero-hours contracts, such as Sports Direct with up to 20 000 out of its 23 000 employees on these contracts, or Pub group JD Wetherspoon, where they amount to 80% of the workforce.

Buckingham Palace and the National Trust charity also deserve to be mentioned here, the former resorting to zero-hours contracts for its summer workers, while the latter finds them a particularly good fit for their weather-dependant activities. The National Trust however assures its zero-hours employees enjoy the same benefits, pro-rata, as full-time ones.

Politician Chuka Umunna declared that zero-hours contracts should be used with the greater of moderations, as although some workers enjoy the flexibility they provide, most suffer from their i

In conclusion, despite their understandable bad press, it should be noted that zero-hours contracts are credited by some as being a reason why unemployment levels haven’t increased too much in the UK in spite of the economic crisis.

In my opinion, the main issue with zero-hours contracts as presented in this article is the reason behind their popularity. Indeed, it seems to arise from employers taking advantage of a workforce ready to make the biggest compromises in order to find the job they desperately need.

But that’s not to say zero-hours contracts should be terminated today. To me, they can make

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