Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

McDonald's ties nine out of 10 workers to zero-hours contracts

Britain's biggest food chain has 83,000 staff on controversial contract as employers body claims economy needs flexibility



Simon Neville

The Guardian, Monday 5 August 2013 21.13 BST


http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/05/mcdonalds-workers-zero-hour-contracts

Bus-Sized 'Fatberg' Threatened London Streets

Repairs have started after Britain's biggest ever "fatberg" - the size of a double-decker bus - was removed from a London sewer.

The 15-tonne mass of festering food fat mixed with wet wipes and sanitary products threatened to send raw sewage spurting onto the leafy streets of Kingston upon Thames.

"We've never seen a single, congealed lump of lard this big clogging our sewers before," said Thames Water waste contracts supervisor Gordon Hailwood.

The true UK debt according to moneyweek.


http://pro.moneyweek.com/myk-eob-tpr123/EMYKP805/?a=5&o=118788&s=123067&u=1056480&l=406715&r=MC&g=0&h=true

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cartoon/2013/aug/06/martin-rowson-zero-hour-contracts-cartoon

MK
ref post 27778
interesting viewing, i watched it all. thought it very good, and a lot of food for thought,
i may or may not agree with all of it but it was interesting, btw do you know who banned it and what date it is ?contrarians may take note, or not.
regards and thanks for posting it.
jkd

The survey of zero hours staff found that only 14% did not like the arrangement. Many cited the ability to work around school hours or their partner's hours. In many cases the staff were able to turn down hours that were offered to them.

Former U.S. president George W. Bush undergoes procedure to fix artery blockage

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/former-u-s-president-george-w-bush-undergoes-procedure-to-fix-artery-blockage-1.1399609#ixzz2bCdFCUSy

Another foot in mouth situation from UKIP

The UK Independence Party has asked one of its senior politicians not to use the phrase "Bongo Bongo Land" again, warning that people abroad might find it "disparaging".

In footage obtained by the Guardian, recorded last month at a meeting in Wordsley, West Midlands, he said: "How we can possibly be giving £1bn a month, when we're in this sort of debt, to Bongo Bongo Land is completely beyond me.

Its great isn't it - you couldn't make this stuff up!

And the media are repeating "bongo bongo land" everywhere.

British MEP sparks outrage with 'bongo bongo land' comments

http://richardwillisuk.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/three-new-polls-show-labours-lead-at-5-or-less/

Three New Polls Show Labour’s Lead at 5% or Less

Three new opinion polls have been published in the last 24 hours all showing the same picture with each of the three main parties within 2% in each poll:

Populus Poll - 5 August

Cons 33% / Lab 38% / LD 12% / UKIP 9% – Labour Lead 5%

YouGov Poll – 6 August

Cons 34% / Lab 38% / LD 11% / UKIP 12% – Labour Lead 4%

ComRes Poll – 6 August

Cons 34% / Lab 37% / LD 10% / UKIP 12% – Labour Lead 3%

It has been unusual recently to have such consistency across different pollsters. We are beginning to see a consistent pattern of Labour down a couple of points, Conservatives up 3-4% and UKIP falling back from their highs of around 20% following the last local elections. Last month we had an ICM poll showing the Conservatives and Labour both on 36%. It cannot be long before we see other pollsters giving similar results.

It is no wonder that dissent is breaking out again within the Labour Party with senior figures criticising Ed Miliband’s poor leadership and complacency.

The next election is now less than 2 years away and it is looking like it will be a close run campaign, rather than the walkover that some Labour MPs seemed to be expecting last year and earlier this year!
About these ads

http://www.cityam.com/article/bad-news-labour-voters-are-getting-behind-coalition-s-cuts

Bad news for Labour: Voters are getting behind coalition’s cuts

ED BALLS and the Labour party have a big problem. The British economy is recovering, despite the coalition’s relatively modest cuts, and the public is increasingly supportive of reducing public spending. This is a devastating blow for Labour’s entire narrative, which was predicated on the view that “cutting too far and too fast” would not just be self-evidently unpopular but would also cripple the economy.

Regardless of counter-factuals and of the sustainability of the recovery (about which more later), fewer and fewer people believe in Labour’s story, which is why the party will soon face a serious crisis despite still being ahead in the polls and thus seemingly on course for victory in 2015.

A YouGov poll for the Sun found that 41 per cent of the public believe the cuts are good for the economy, exactly the same share that believe that they are bad. This is first time since December 2010 that there isn’t a plurality against the cuts, a major breakthrough for the coalition and for supporters of austerity. The data also shows that 58 per cent of those polled think the spending cuts are necessary, against 28 per cent who don’t; that 36 per cent blame Labour for the need to cut, just 24 per cent the coalition and 27 per cent both. These are all dire findings for the opposition. The only bad news for David Cameron is that 54 per cent think the cuts are unfair, against 30 per cent who believe them to be fair, presumably partly reflecting the view that the Tories are toffs who tend not to care about “people like us” (and partly because pensioners and some areas are being protected while other groups are not).

Support for the cuts tends to move in tandem with overall levels of confidence in the economy; and surveys and indicators from YouGov and other pollsters have been showing that not only has this been gradually increasing but that it has recently reached something of a tipping point.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/06/david-cameron-britain-dockers-line-up-back


Zero-hours contracts: in Cameron's Britain, the dockers' line-up is back

Driven by privatisation and corporate muscle, zero-hours casualisation is disastrous for workers, jobs and real recovery


Seumas Milne

The Guardian, Tuesday 6 August 2013 22.15 BST




The hallmarks of David Cameron's Britain are becoming clearer: payday loans, food banks, the bedroom tax, G4S and now zero-hours contracts. Until this week, it was often claimed that zero-hours jobs – the ultimate "flexible labour market" fix where employees are tied to a company with no guarantee of work – accounted for only a tiny fraction of the workforce.

Now we know that there are about a million of them – and their numbers are escalating. For most, this is 21st-century serfdom: concentrated in low-paid sectors, delivering one-sided flexibility to the employer and insecurity to the worker, with no requirement for holiday, sick or redundancy pay, and imposing wild fluctuations in hours on an often intimidated workforce.

For a minority, they can offer genuine flexible work and even the option of turning jobs down without paying a penalty (though other forms of casual or freelance work are likely to be more attractive). For the most part, however, this is a modern version of the dockers' line-up: on-call casual contracts where employees can be barred for working for another employer and still receive no pay. It's scarcely surprising zero-hours workers complain of being "bullied" and "terrified".

Nor is this Victorian-style scheme mainly confined to small firms or seasonal work. This is about household names: McDonald's, Boots, Amazon, Abercrombie & Fitch, Cineworld, the Tate galleries and Buckingham Palace. All rely on zero-hours contracts. In the case of Sports Direct, they're used to enforce a two-tier workforce: 90% of its 23,000 workers are on zero-hours deals, while the rest are full-time employees on bonuses of up to £100,000.

Now the zero-hours culture is spreading rapidly throughout the public and voluntary sectors. There are already up to 100,000 workers on zero-hours contracts in the health service. And the large majority of home care workers are forced to operate under these standby contracts – which have also colonised colleges and universities, reducing continuity of support for students and the vulnerable into the bargain.

But zero hours are only one part of a far wider casualisation process that has accelerated since the crash of 2008 and the arrival of the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition. Agency working, temporary work and enforced part-time working have all mushroomed: nearly half the jobs created since 2008 have been temporary, as half a million permanent jobs have been lost.

So while ministers and their supporters claim that labour flexibility has kept unemployment at a mere 2.5 million, or about 8% of the workforce, underemployment – including those on part-time or casual contracts who want to work more hours – is 10%.

It's not as if this embrace of zero-hours contracts and other forms of casualisation has simply happened spontaneously, either. The sharp intensification of privatisation or "opening up" of public services by the coalition has fuelled the process, as local authorities respond to cuts in funding by driving through ever tighter tenders on outsourced contracts.

Councils now commission home care, for instance, from a large number of contractors without guaranteed hours – who can bid online for a contract to provide care even for one elderly person. That is then translated into zero-hours contracts for hundreds of thousands of care workers.

So privatisation of public services, which has generated one scandalous failure and fraud after another and is opposed by a large majority of the public (demonstrated once again by polling for the new "We Own It" campaign) is also driving the race to the bottom in pay and conditions for Britain's workers.

Far from boosting economic recovery or employment, that's one of the factors behind the longest fall in real wages since the 1870s, as four out of five new jobs since 2008 have been created in low-wage sectors, by the TUC's reckoning. The result is a deadweight drag on demand, falling productivity and a spiral of under-investment.

The idea that an even more insecure jobs market will turn that round, and slash unemployment and underemployment, clearly doesn't stack up. The last time Britain had anything close to full employment, in the 1960s and 70s, it also had far more regulated and secure employment, as do Europe's more successful economies today.

But that is of course a long way from the Tory vision of the workplace, made clear by the party's chairman Grant Shapps last week when he complained about firms' need to be "disingenuous" about sacking people. And in case there were any doubt about who the coalition parties want to have the whip hand at work, last Monday the government introduced a prohibitive £1,200 fee for anyone going to an employment tribunal to protect their legal rights – the latest in a string of retrograde steps to load the dice still further against employees.

That's the spirit of zero-hours contracts: unfettered flexibility for capital, powerless prostration for the workforce. Under public pressure, the business secretary, Vince Cable, has now suggested "moving forward with recommendations to consult" about outlawing the most extreme zero-hours abuses; so far, Labour's frontbench hasn't gone much further.

If the balance of workplace power is even going to begin to be righted, these contracts will have to be scrapped – and regulation imposed on other schemes or bogus self-employment arrangements that might be used to replace them. That will also require stronger unions, of course – and a Labour leadership that is prepared to stand up to corporate interests.

Which will take a political and industrial fight. As elsewhere, the response of this government and its business allies to the crisis unleashed in 2008 has been to try to restore profitability at the expense of the living standards of the majority – instead of using the public sector to drive up investment and growth directly. Reducing workers' bargaining power is part of that.

What's clear is that the model of capitalism that crashed and burned five years ago – and they are now trying to resurrect – is unable to deliver secure jobs and full employment, or anything like it. If neoliberalism were just a theory of economic management, it would have been discredited by its failure. What's going on now is a reminder that it's also a system of social power.

one would not expect the gurniad to take other than the above stance, just as no doubt it supported that bunch of ehrc do-gooders who complained about ethnic minorities being targetted as potential illegals

my own view on these "zero hour contracts" is that they are not all bad, nothwithstanding that most would rather have defined hours etc etc ..... however, i also have sympathy for those companies who feel that this is the only way they can stay viable
so on balance, better a crummy job than no job

on the other side, as i mentioned before, are the likes of courier drivers whose employers (all as far as i can determine) insist that their drivers are self-employed ..... no, the drivers aren't paid cash, but of course they are only employed "as needed" and benefit from none of the statutory perks and safety nets afforded even to those on "zero hour contract"

Zero hours contracts are not bad per se. They are nothing new and it equates to casual workers. The ones that are potentially a problem are the exclusive zero hour contracts where an employee may not work for anyone else for the duration of the contract. It is this that Vince Cable is going after. It is impossible to stop zero hours contracts as some jobs only exist on that basis.

If they want zero hour workers, they should call them self employed, cos that's what they are.

Oh, and pay the going rate....£7 quid an hour wont cover it.

They are not self employed. They wouldn't be allowed to be self employed under tax rules. If a worker works for just one employer irrespective of any exclusivity, then tax has to be deducted at source as under PAYE. They are just employed with no fixed hours. That's a situation that has always existed. The only reason that this has become a story is because the numbers are increasing. It is market forces. There is a surplus in the workforce so it is a buyers' market. In times of fuller employment, employers would want everyone to work full time and it would be closer to a sellers' market. It is very dangerous to interfere with this process by legislation.

Max - self-employed can be a pain as the person then has to keep proper records and make tax returns etc etc ...... also, as already pointed out, they do not get the perks of being in the system - e.g. no holiday pay; no sick pay; no unemployment benefit and so on and so on

Sports Direct use zero hours staff. These staff could not be self employed due to tax rules. To be self employed you have to demonstrate tat you are running a business with multiple customers.

A couple of links that may be of interest.



http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/16/03/2010/54858/flexible-working-push-by-jobcentres-welcomed-by-employers.htm

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/feb/03/lord-freud-recession-unemployment-conservatives

It is all part of what is known as 'supply side policies'.