Zero hour contracts

3 News reports:

There’s a call to ban “zero hour” contracts following evidence their use in New Zealand is spreading.

The contracts don’t guarantee any hours of work and employees have to be ready to come in when they’re called.

Unions say employers have started following their overseas counterparts.

“McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Burger King, Wendy’s – all of the contracts have no minimum hours,” Unite Union’s Mike Treen said on Radio New Zealand today.

“People can be, and are, rostered anywhere from three to 40 hours a week, or sometimes 60 hours a week.”

The use of zero hour contracts when the employer’s hours of operation are well known in advance seems pretty scummy. If you know your opening hours you should be able to guarantee a minimum number of hours to staff.

NZ First says they must be outlawed.

Industrial relations spokesman Clayton Mitchell says the contracts are “a dreadful British experiment” that New Zealand doesn’t need.

“These contracts are despicable and cruel, and designed to put workers at the beck and call of their employer,” he said.

Banning them however would be very stupid and undesirable. Not all employers are the same. Some employers do not have fixed hours of operation. They only have work for their staff, when they have clients who have work for them to do. If you ban zero hour contracts for all employers, then you would potentially bankrupt some employers who would be having to pay staff to turn up and do nothing.

Treating all employers as the same is stupid and inflexible. McDonalds is not the same as a call centre, for example. The solution to the zero hour contracts at McDonalds is now a law change, but negotiations with McDonalds.