ZERO HOURS, ZERO RIGHTS

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: january 2014 :: RMTnews 10 Employment agencies are forcing their way into the transport industry with the express intent of profiteering at the expense of jobs, security and decent pay and conditions. On rail infrastructure, RMT has exposed how the use of agencies is directly associated with fatigue, breaches of safety, bogus self-employment, casualisation and poverty pay. The union is also mounting campaigns at train operating companies and London Underground that use agencies, calling on them to bring work back in-house on decent pay and conditions. RMT members working as cleaners for sub-contractors Mitie on First Great Western have been taking strike action since October in a dispute over low pay and against zero hour contracts. Well over a million workers are working on zero hours and it is so widely used that in some sectors it is now the dominant form of employment. Workers on these contracts have no guaranteed earnings providing certainty for the future as, for example, you can’t get a mortgage. The need to respond to calls to attend work, frequently at short notice, places a particular strain on families and those who have to arrange care for dependents. Even regular patterns of work can be reduced to zero at a moment’s notice with no right to redeployment or redundancy pay as workers are denied employment rights. So why hasn’t the much- lauded European Union Agency Work Regulations (AWR) defended these vulnerable workers? The reality is that despite the fact that AWR supposedly protects agency workers, the overwhelming effect has been to normalise and institutionalise casualised labour. Moreover whilst the regulations claim to ensure agency workers enjoy the same basic pay and conditions as permanent workers any such rights only kicks in after 12 weeks. This means that most agency workers do not benefit. STRIKING AGAINST ZERO HOURS: Baker’s union BFAWU members on strike at Hovis (Premier Foods) Wigan over the introduction of agency staff on Zero Hours contracts, redundancies and a reduction in hours from 52 to 40 per week. ZERO HOURS ZERO RIGHTS Zero hours contracts are making casualisation, exploitation and low pay endemic in the transport sector