A zero hour contract is just as it sounds, a contract with zero hours or to put it another way, a contract with no guaranteed hours of work. In other words workers are not guaranteed any hours of work whatsoever from an employer/agency.
Zero hour contracts are widely used in many sectors including the public sector and education. People usually register with an agency, who supplies the work to the agency worker. The agency has no obligation to provide work every day or at all.
There could be circumstances where you turn up for work and are turned away even when an agency has told you that work is available. There is nothing that you can do about this. Therefore there is no employment protection for agency workers.
Limited Statutory Definition
Although there is no clear and precise definition of zero hour contracts, S27A of the Employment Rights Act 1996 has defined them in a limited way, since 2015. The limited statutory definition in the Employment Rights Act defines zero hour contracts as contracts of employment or workers’ contract where:
(i) the undertaking to work is conditional on work being offered; and
(ii) there is no certainty that work will be offered.
This means that the agency worker has no control over whether they are going to be working or not and puts the agency/ supplier of work in complete control. Workers also describe zero hour contracts as contracts with no guaranteed hours.
Status under a Zero Hour Contract
The status of a person is usually an employee or independent contractor who works for an employer. However there is another category known as “Worker” as defined by s230 (3) of the Employments Rights Act 1996
Some contracts provide for workers to accept any work offered whereas other contracts may allow the worker to turn down work.
Working under a contract with no guaranteed hours of work will generally mean that employment status is limited to that of a “Worker”.
Limited Employment Rights
This means employment rights and protection is limited to the National Minimum Wage, paid annual leave and protection from discrimination.
Workers with no guaranteed hours of work contracts are not protected against unfair dismissal and redundancy.
Many people find zero hour/ no guaranteed hours of work contracts flexible and beneficial to their lifestyles. However others can only find work on zero hour contracts and have financial commitments including a mortgage, credit cards and loans, and find it hard and sometimes impossible to make ends meet. The unpredictable hours means insecure income
The ONS (Office for National Statistics) uses the term ‘lack of guaranteed hours’ in order to collect statistics on their usage. The ONS collects statistics on contracts with zero hours as part of the Labour Force Survey and formerly from a survey of businesses
Estimates for April-June 2018 suggest that 780,000 people were on contracts with no guaranteed hours or work, in their main job, representing 2.4% of all people in employment.
