McDonald's ties nine out of 10 workers to zero-hours contracts
"...The Guardian has seen a contract for staff at one of the largest Subway franchisees, Made To Order, which runs more than 100 Subways in Greater Manchester and Yorkshire.
The contract states: "The company has no duty to provide you with work. Your hours of work are not predetermined and will be notified to you on a weekly basis as soon as is reasonably practicable in advance by your store manager. The company has the right to require you to work varied or extended hours from time to time."
It adds that by signing the contract all non-management staff - or "sandwich artists" - waive their right under working time regulations to work no more than 48 hours a week...
...By comparison, sandwich chain Pret A Manger said it does not use zero-hours contracts and that all staff are on a minimum of eight guaranteed hours a week....
...The IoD criticised calls for a change to the rules and said banning the contracts would have extremely damaging results for businesses and employees. It said the flexibility was vital to a strong economy.
Alexander Ehmann, head of regulatory policy at the IoD, said: "Calls to ban zero-hours contracts are deeply misguided and any such action would have extremely damaging results. It would hurt thousands of employees who rely on the flexibility such contracts allow and employers, especially small and medium-sized firms, would struggle to hire the staff they need to meet varying demand.
"Countries with a flexible labour market tend to have lower unemployment and higher employment, and one of the reasons that the UK economy has not gone the way of southern Europe is because employers have been able to adapt swiftly to changing demand.""
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/05/mcdonalds-workers-zero-hour-contracts
As I said, I am all for 'flexibility', but not for one sided flexibility. There needs to be flexibility on the unemployment and housing benefit front also.
I hear no calls for utilities or landlords to be more flexible, in not charging for what they provide in times when these employees are not needed at work.
It must be noted that many such contracts forbid the employee from having another job elsewhere.