The writer is currently on book leave from her FT column Is it premature to write an obituary for zero-hours contracts in Britain? Perhaps. The Labour party, which has promised to put a stop to these employment contracts which don’t guarantee any hours of work, has not yet won power. Even if it does take over on July 4, unions complain the party is already tiptoeing away from a complete ban. So, consider this an aspirational obituary: I think the UK should kill off zero-hours contracts.
Finally there is the fear of clogging up Britain’s flexible labour market, which has delivered high employment rates over the past decade. Here it’s helpful to look at countries that have banned or severely restricted zero-hours contracts, such as New Zealand, Germany and Ireland. None have suffered: the latest comparable OECD data has their employment rates at 79.8, 77.3 and 73.9 per cent respectively, compared with the UK’s 75 per cent. Now to the “how”.