The other day, I saw this post on Facebook:
Here, Paul writes to Jeremy Corbyn to ask him to campaign for zero-hour contracts “to be banned for all industries where quality, consistency and reliability of service is to vulnerable or dependent people?”.
I’ve been in zero-hour contracts; I know that they create a culture where the workers feel undervalued, where they’re treated as disposable cogs in a machine which will just get tossed out if they are not meeting their targets.
It sucks.
It makes you hate your managers because the only contact you have with them is when you’re in trouble or they get on with you. If you go on holiday, or even if you’re ill, you rarely get paid time off.
If workers feel undervalued, they won’t value their job. They do it for the wrong reasons, and it means that either they won’t take it seriously, or they’ll be unethical and cut corners to earn a bonus or commission.
There are benefits to zero-hour contracts; I get that. Sometimes people need to work on a flexible basis. Maybe it’s their second job, or they have a hectic life. But for some jobs, they don’t work. If an organisation wants people who care about their job or the company they work for, then they need to care about the workers. Having a job that is secure based only on meeting targets means workers are scrutinised for focusing on quality over ticking boxes. And if managers are so over worked that their only interaction with a worker is to tell them off, then that creates a massive divide between workers in the bigger picture of that company. Managers have their own targets to meet which are based on how good the workers are, so, sometimes it’s easier to fire people on the spot if they’re not up to scratch, rather than work with them to make things better because they are always hiring.
Ruthless zero-hour contracts in certain industries are detrimental to the workers, the ethics, and the care of vulnerable people and rarely represent the interests of everybody. Things need to change, and soon. If you agree, I urge you to join me and write to your MP, calling on them to campaign for things to change.
What are your experiences with zero-hour contracts? Let me know in the comments below.