Zero hours = zero rights?
One of my friends got a new job the other day.
She’s been unemployed since being made redundant last summer and jumped at the chance to do some casual work that used her admin skills.
As you’d expect, I had my HR hat on, asking about her contract, sick pay and holiday and all that jazz.
Her response?
“Oh no, I don’t get any of that stuff because I’m a zero hours worker”.
I pointed out that however wonderful her new employer was, they were also operating illegally and not paying her what she was owed.
I offered to read the contract to check what else they had got wrong.
The employer had correctly worded the contact to make it a “zero hours” one: they did not have to offer work and the worker did not have to accept it.
But pretty much everything else was rubbish:
- NO holiday pay – all workers accrue this from day one of working, no matter what their contract.
- NO Statutory Sick Pay – all workers are entitled to this if they earn the right amount each week to qualify (currently £120/week).
- NO notice period – if you want to issue the person with a P45, you still need to give them notice of this, even if you do not have to give them actual work for that notice period.
- NO date when salaries will be paid into bank accounts – this is a legal requirement to state a specific day, not just “end of the month”.
- GDPR – asking for consent to process data, which cannot legally be given by an employee, they can only understand, not agree.
- Non-solicitation clause for 12 months after termination of employment – totally unenforceable. Anything over 3 months needs to be justified and given that she’s an entry level zero hours worker, anything longer than 1 month would be seen as silly by the Courts.
And then of course there are all the other clauses that they didn’t put in at all.
She doesn’t want to rock the boat and fears being fired if she points out these mistakes.
Our plan is that when her contract comes to an end, she then asks for what she is entitled to, and if they refuse, that we start an Early Conciliation claim.
She will get the money, because it is a non-contestable case:
Did you pay holiday pay? No? Then it has to be paid. No discussion. Staff cannot sign away their rights, and there are NO workers who are not entitled to it.
Cue the classic whine from bad employers as a defence:
“If we pay them what they are legally owed, then our business model doesn’t work! We won’t have enough profit to pay ourselves dividends.”
My heart bleeds.
If you have zero hours workers and think that they don’t get any of these statutory entitlements, then you need to sort yourselves out before you get an Early Conciliation claim from ACAS.
Which you will have to pay.
If you want to read more about the rights Zero-Hours workers have, read this post
