Sports Direct

I'm not defending the government,but each one like's to boast how they got unemployment down,whacking the pay up for zero hours contracts would throw people back out of jobs,firm's would move as much work as they could abroad

 

Someone on a zero hour contract shouldn't count as being employed for the purpose of those figures.
They're not guaranteed any hours, so they're not definitely doing any work.

Something tells me that employment law would change a little if that was the case.

 

they are counted as employed though

 

Interestingly enough, I've been doing some summer work in their Norwich branch, to try and earn some extra cash for a holiday. I'm on a zero hours contract, but I've been consistently told that there will always be regular hours for me - and I'm told when I'll be working at least a week in advance. Oddly, I do get holiday pay - for every three months I work there, I get the average of one months salary during that period. I for one think that's pretty decent. They offer minimum wage, but it goes up after 3, then 6 months - and they offer incentive bonuses for selling certain items. I can think of much worse places to work in all honesty.

 

Building stadiums in Qatar, for example.

Or the Spurs press office during the summer.

 

The last one sounds like the perfect place to "work". They seem to have the whole summer off (and winter come to think of it).

 

I might apply here too (along with the OS maintainer). I'd turn it into the British Marca.

 

Canary I look at this from a different perspective, coming as I do from the 1960's and knowing what it was like before all these changes to employment law took place. I assume you are younger than me and like the majority of the working population have to except the situation that you find yourself in and make the best of it that you can.

Nevertheless we have moved backwards a long way with employment law that resembles the 18th century. Working men and women fought for hundreds of years to achieve some kind of fair deal and it was all wiped away in a few short years in the 1980's.

The reality is that it is not getting better and it will not, unless working people organise and fight back. Time to realise that looking after No1 means looking after your coleagues too, otherwise the outlook is pretty bleak IMO.

 

Unions are bad, though. Extremely rich people keep telling everyone that, so it must be true.

 

Extremely rich people must know best, surely, because obviously they are rich because they are so clever.

 

I very much endorse this. When you grow up with a situation you very much adapt to it, not knowing any better (and I don't mean that disrespectfully). As Spurf said, decades of progress was thrown away in order to usher in the "me, me, me" society where caring about other people is now seen as quite peculiar when it used to be much more the default position. This divide and conquer approach has very much worked because those in work are doing anything, accepting any conditions etc, and those out of work have far less chance. Those who dare strike now are met with 'they are lucky to have jobs at all' comments, which have merit, except all that happens as a result is working conditions get worse. The private sector have even been set against the public sector because they are told to be jelous of public sector pensions (when private sector pensions have lost value on the markets, and final salary schemes withdrawn etc). And this is massaged over by a "bread and circuses" approach that if the masses are distracted they don't realise that their lot in life is far worse than it need be, and the gap between the ultra rich and poor gets wider.

The same goes with our basic freedoms. Back at school in the 70s if you'd asked me which country monitored communications to such an extent and had systems that automatically issued tickets for driving offences without anyone being involved with average speed cameras etc, or could pinpoint your location by electronic emissions or the tickets you used to travel etc, I would have seriously thought you would be talking about a communist country! In fact one of the reasons I joined the TA in 1979 was that I was determined to defend the relative freedom we had in this country compared to the Soviet bloc (as it was then). But every terrorist alert we lose a bit more freedom - for our security you understand.

Sorry to go off topic and into a bit of a rant, but I am really sad about what has happend to this country in the last few decades.

 

We've already got one - the various tentacles of the Murdoch Empire do the exact same for Man Utd.

 

Slightly drifting on the subject here, but I watched an interesting Youtube video about wealth inequality in the US a while ago:

[video=youtube;QPKKQnijnsM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM[/video]

Wonder how similar it is in the UK? Where did I put that guillotine?

 

Just as a general question to all those on here that have said they are or have been on zero hours contracts and seems to be happy with that arrangement, have any of you tried and successfully managed to get a mortgage or a sizeable loan whilst in that kind of employment?

 

got a sizeable loan,no problem,already had a mortage

 

Be interesting to know if anyone got a mortgage whilst on zero hours. Be surprised if they did!

 

I'm sure you can. It's like being self employed and they would want to see a year or mores payslips, but with the right history should be ok.

 

Really?
Banker: Ok so you want a mortgage. What's your annual salary sir?
Customer: Umm.... well it depends really.
Banker: On what?
Customer: How many hours I do each week
Banker: Oh, so you're part-time employed?
Customer: No, just on zero hours so my boss doesn't have to commit to giving me any set hours every week. It's great having no job security.
Banker: Oh, so you don't have a contract and no fixed annual income?
Customer: No.
Banker: There's the door!

 

Like SD said that is exactly the same position as a self-employed person. I have family members who are self-employed and have mortgages.

 

If he conducts the interview like that, I wouldn't lend him a cent either