https://www.ft.com/content/85771e1e-97fc-4b86-bd4f-37a10721d37e
Labour banning zero hours contracts and fire and rehire, and also banning contacting government staff out of hours.
That, all by itself, would get my vote. That’s a seriously big chunk of what’s wrong with modern working conditions. Well done them, if this is real.
@sil it's interesting coming from a Labour party which doesn't seem to back unions. I can't see how legislation against these things won't just be used against people. Will it really address the power imbalance or will rich people just find another way around it that makes them rich?
@intrbiz I’m not sure that there’s a way to wholly remove the ability of people with money to skew things in their own direction, without a completely implausible shake up of the way the economy works. But putting a stop to the most obvious ways of exploitation is a major improvement over where we are today. It took a long time after employee protection laws were created for them to invent zero hours contracts. Pushing that back another 20 years is a victory in itself.
@sil my main concern would be that any legislation which removes flexibility in contracts is likely to be very difficult and likely to backfire. Whereas a Labour party which supported unions and improving peoples rights might attract me more.
@intrbiz I, personally, don't agree with that. I think of banning zero-hours contracts as being something like enforcing minimum holiday day requirements; it's a floor below which exploitative employers can't go. Attempting to change how working works on a bigger picture scale is a better long-term idea, certainly, but is very difficult to do. The right to have a job which can't be removed or required at the whim of your employer is a right that should be defended.
@sil thats a good point, I'd not thought about it on those terms. But won't employer's currently using zero hour contracts just use casual work contracts. Surely if there was a balance of power, no one would take a zero hours contract.
@intrbiz @sil I suspect a UBI would be a much better move - that in theory gives those employees the money and power to say “screw your 0 hr contract, I don’t need it”.
Whereas banning zero hours contracts probably just leaves them equally powerless, but likely now also jobless. It’s hard to see that as a good result.
Good intentions are not enough.
@fodwyer @intrbiz well, I don't think that's right. (The jobless part. I agree with UBI, mostly.) If everyone on a zero-hours contract were jobless then... who's doing those jobs? Hotels still need wait staff; just now those hotels have to give those staff some small measure of job security. If the hotels prefer to do without waiters than do that then sure, more joblessness, but that means that that job wasn't actually necessary anyway, no?
@intrbiz I don't think this affects casual work at all; I did plenty of casual work when I was younger, and the key point was that there was no imbalance of power. I could choose to refuse work, and they could choose to not provide work, but if I elected to not show up, that didn't mean that I forfeited all future work. The issue is not with actual casual work; it's with employers treating what should be an actual job *as* casual work, even if employees don't want that.