Richard Dunstan is a freelance public policy researcher. He blogs at Labour Pains.
Amid press reports of business leaders pushing Keir Starmer to water down Labour’s ambitious plans for reform of workers’ rights, Angela Rayner took to the pages of The Financial Times to insist that Labour’s New Deal for Working People will be “a key part of our plan to grow the economy” by, among other things, “banning exploitative zero-hours contracts”.
This is not a new pledge. Labour have been talking about banning zero-hours contracts for over a decade. A ban was a manifesto pledge not only in 2017 and 2019, under Jeremy Corbyn, but also in 2015, under Ed Miliband. But we still have no idea how Labour plans to ban them. And it’s not as easy as it sounds, because not all zero-hours contracts are unwanted, let alone ‘exploitative’.
According to Acas, flexible contracts such as zero-hours contracts can “benefit organisations and individuals where they meet the needs of both parties. For example, they can help businesses respond to fluctuating demands and can give individuals the flexibility they may need to balance their work and home lives.”
Hundreds of thousands of people work perfectly happily on such contracts. In recent years I have done so, both for a charity and for a Labour MP. And I was not exploited, not even by the Labour MP.
However, as a member of the last Labour government’s Vulnerable Worker Enforcement Forum, I know very well that many workers on a zero-hours contract are treated badly. Some are treated very badly indeed.
The difficulty is that the very same paper zero-hours contract can be used entirely differently by two employers – one in a way that benefits both the employer and the worker, and one in an exploitative way that benefits only the employer and brings severe hardship to the worker. So, how do you ban one of those contracts, without banning both?
In 2015, just like Angela Rayner now, Ed Miliband talked about banning “exploitative zero-hours contracts”. In his case it was clear the adjective was a qualifier, not a classifier: according to a Guardian analysis at the time, Miliband’s qualified ban would have affected “90 per cent of zero-hours contracts”.
However, we don’t know whether Rayner is using “exploitative” as a qualifier or a classifier, not least because the adjective does not appear in the two short paragraphs that are all that Labour’s 12-page New Deal for Working People has to say on the matter:
Labour will ban zero hours contracts and contracts without a minimum number of guaranteed hours. We will also ensure anyone working regular hours for twelve weeks or more will gain a right to a regular contract to reflect those hours normally worked.
Labour will also ensure all workers get reasonable notice of any change in shifts or working time, with wages for any shifts cancelled without appropriate notice being paid to workers in full.
How would this proposed ban actually work? What would the ‘minimum number of guaranteed hours” need to be to avoid the ban? Twenty? Ten? Five? Two? One? Will we then need a ban on one-hour contracts?
We don’t know, because no one is telling us. Yet Labour promises to introduce legislation to implement this and other New Deal for Working People pledges within 100 days of taking office. So these questions need answers. Now.
In her Financial Times piece, Rayner notes that, in 2017, the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices called for “significant changes to our labour market”. But the Taylor Review also concluded that “to ban zero-hours contracts in their totality would negatively impact many more people that it helped.” Awkward.
Indeed, the Taylor Review cited Labour Force Survey evidence that two-thirds of the some 1.1 million people on zero-hours contracts do not want to work more hours. Which would suggest they are not totally unhappy. Does Angela Rayner plan to ban the zero-hours contracts of those 725,000 workers?
The TUC certainly wants her to do so. There was no qualifier in their call last week for a “ban on zero-hours contracts”. Not some zero-hours contracts. All of them.
The TUC cite their new survey findings that “two in three zero-hours contract workers have been with their current employer for over a year, and one in eight (12 per cent) have been with their current employer for over 10 years”. From this they conclude that “the overwhelming majority” of workers on such contracts are “stuck” in insecure employment, with bad employers “parking workers on zero-hours contracts for years on end”.
But are all of those 130,000 workers who’ve been on a zero-hours contract with the same employer for more than a decade simply “stuck” in bad, insecure work? Or is it not more plausible that at least many of them have stayed that long because the contract suits them?
In short, this issue is not as straightforward as the TUC suggest, or as Labour shadow ministers such as Angela Rayner, Justin Madders, and Anneliese Dodds appear to believe. Last week, on social media, I tried repeatedly to get the latter – and other Labour MPs – to tell me whether they plan to ban all zero-hours contracts, or only some of them (the bad ones). No one responded, but had they done so, and had they said ‘only the bad ones’, my next question would have been: how do you plan to tell the bad ones from the good ones?
Sadly, such ‘policy by slogan’ is par for the course with Starmer’s Labour, which has also pledged a ban on so-called ‘conversion therapy’, despite there being zero evidence of a problem in need of a fix. But as Neil Carberry, chief executive of REC and an Acas council member, noted last week:
“Political discussion on zero-hours contracts has been a nuance-free zone. All deep studies of the issue conclude a ban on all [such contracts] is difficult and problematic. A more careful approach is necessary.”
Maybe this is another of those “thorny issues” that Sue Gray, Starmer’s new Chief of Staff, will need to resolve with one of her “transformational” citizens’ assemblies? Or have they now been banned too?
Richard Dunstan is a freelance public policy researcher. He blogs at Labour Pains.
Amid press reports of business leaders pushing Keir Starmer to water down Labour’s ambitious plans for reform of workers’ rights, Angela Rayner took to the pages of The Financial Times to insist that Labour’s New Deal for Working People will be “a key part of our plan to grow the economy” by, among other things, “banning exploitative zero-hours contracts”.
This is not a new pledge. Labour have been talking about banning zero-hours contracts for over a decade. A ban was a manifesto pledge not only in 2017 and 2019, under Jeremy Corbyn, but also in 2015, under Ed Miliband. But we still have no idea how Labour plans to ban them. And it’s not as easy as it sounds, because not all zero-hours contracts are unwanted, let alone ‘exploitative’.
According to Acas, flexible contracts such as zero-hours contracts can “benefit organisations and individuals where they meet the needs of both parties. For example, they can help businesses respond to fluctuating demands and can give individuals the flexibility they may need to balance their work and home lives.”
Hundreds of thousands of people work perfectly happily on such contracts. In recent years I have done so, both for a charity and for a Labour MP. And I was not exploited, not even by the Labour MP.
However, as a member of the last Labour government’s Vulnerable Worker Enforcement Forum, I know very well that many workers on a zero-hours contract are treated badly. Some are treated very badly indeed.
The difficulty is that the very same paper zero-hours contract can be used entirely differently by two employers – one in a way that benefits both the employer and the worker, and one in an exploitative way that benefits only the employer and brings severe hardship to the worker. So, how do you ban one of those contracts, without banning both?
In 2015, just like Angela Rayner now, Ed Miliband talked about banning “exploitative zero-hours contracts”. In his case it was clear the adjective was a qualifier, not a classifier: according to a Guardian analysis at the time, Miliband’s qualified ban would have affected “90 per cent of zero-hours contracts”.
However, we don’t know whether Rayner is using “exploitative” as a qualifier or a classifier, not least because the adjective does not appear in the two short paragraphs that are all that Labour’s 12-page New Deal for Working People has to say on the matter:
Labour will ban zero hours contracts and contracts without a minimum number of guaranteed hours. We will also ensure anyone working regular hours for twelve weeks or more will gain a right to a regular contract to reflect those hours normally worked.
Labour will also ensure all workers get reasonable notice of any change in shifts or working time, with wages for any shifts cancelled without appropriate notice being paid to workers in full.
How would this proposed ban actually work? What would the ‘minimum number of guaranteed hours” need to be to avoid the ban? Twenty? Ten? Five? Two? One? Will we then need a ban on one-hour contracts?
We don’t know, because no one is telling us. Yet Labour promises to introduce legislation to implement this and other New Deal for Working People pledges within 100 days of taking office. So these questions need answers. Now.
In her Financial Times piece, Rayner notes that, in 2017, the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices called for “significant changes to our labour market”. But the Taylor Review also concluded that “to ban zero-hours contracts in their totality would negatively impact many more people that it helped.” Awkward.
Indeed, the Taylor Review cited Labour Force Survey evidence that two-thirds of the some 1.1 million people on zero-hours contracts do not want to work more hours. Which would suggest they are not totally unhappy. Does Angela Rayner plan to ban the zero-hours contracts of those 725,000 workers?
The TUC certainly wants her to do so. There was no qualifier in their call last week for a “ban on zero-hours contracts”. Not some zero-hours contracts. All of them.
The TUC cite their new survey findings that “two in three zero-hours contract workers have been with their current employer for over a year, and one in eight (12 per cent) have been with their current employer for over 10 years”. From this they conclude that “the overwhelming majority” of workers on such contracts are “stuck” in insecure employment, with bad employers “parking workers on zero-hours contracts for years on end”.
But are all of those 130,000 workers who’ve been on a zero-hours contract with the same employer for more than a decade simply “stuck” in bad, insecure work? Or is it not more plausible that at least many of them have stayed that long because the contract suits them?
In short, this issue is not as straightforward as the TUC suggest, or as Labour shadow ministers such as Angela Rayner, Justin Madders, and Anneliese Dodds appear to believe. Last week, on social media, I tried repeatedly to get the latter – and other Labour MPs – to tell me whether they plan to ban all zero-hours contracts, or only some of them (the bad ones). No one responded, but had they done so, and had they said ‘only the bad ones’, my next question would have been: how do you plan to tell the bad ones from the good ones?
Sadly, such ‘policy by slogan’ is par for the course with Starmer’s Labour, which has also pledged a ban on so-called ‘conversion therapy’, despite there being zero evidence of a problem in need of a fix. But as Neil Carberry, chief executive of REC and an Acas council member, noted last week:
“Political discussion on zero-hours contracts has been a nuance-free zone. All deep studies of the issue conclude a ban on all [such contracts] is difficult and problematic. A more careful approach is necessary.”
Maybe this is another of those “thorny issues” that Sue Gray, Starmer’s new Chief of Staff, will need to resolve with one of her “transformational” citizens’ assemblies? Or have they now been banned too?