Miliband attacks Sports Direct over zero-hours contracts



Labour leader Ed Miliband has accused Sports Direct of using Victorian practices for hiring thousands of workers on zero-hours contracts.

In a speech, he said the firm was a "terrible place to work". Labour claims 17,000 of its 20,000 UK employees are not guaranteed regular hours.

Mr Miliband promised to ban "the exploitation of zero-hours contracts".

Sports Direct, one of the UK's biggest employers, said it was continuing to review "core employment procedures".

Zero-hours contracts do not guarantee regular work for employees. Sick pay is often not included although holiday pay should be, in line with working time regulations.

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I hate the thought of zeros hours.
They should be outlawed.

Wirral council have zero hours contracts as I work there , and it's a LABOUR council . Wake up people

Never mind zero hours contracts ---Zero jobs.

Zero hours contracts skyrocketed under Labour, rising from around 50,000 in 2005 to over 150,000 in 2009. Its now somewhere around 200,000.

Back in April:

Why has Labour watered down its plans to tackle zero-hour contracts?
http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...own-its-plans-tackle-zero-hour-contracts

Its interesting to see Labour flip-flop on them. Right now they're bad so they can use them as a vote winner. But ten years ago they were good. Britain was coming out of recession and the economy was growing at close to 4 percent. Work was apparently plentiful and they just couldn’t find people to take up full-time or part-time permanent roles. There just weren’t enough people looking for permanent jobs. Zero-hours contracts was a way of trying to solve the labour shortage.

According to a study by the Work Foundation in 2013, 80 per cent of people on zero-hours contracts are not looking for another job. Only 26 per cent of them said they wanted longer hours, which implies that around three-quarters are content with their current work pattern.

To put this in perspective, the Work Foundation reckoned that 200,000 people were employed on zero hours contracts, which is only 0.7 per cent of the workforce.

It would be interesting to know what profits these zero hour firms make and what taxes (if any) they pay.