Laura Slattery: Low-hours and zero-hours contracts give employers one-way flexibility

You have to wonder how interviews for internal promotions play out at Dunnes Stores. "Where do you see yourself in five years' time?" Confused pause. "I work for you, remember. I don't know where I'll be in five days."

When Enda Kenny told the Dáil he supported its striking workers in their "right to have clarity in their working lives" he was effectively saying: "Look, Dunnes, there seems to be some unnecessary jerking around going on here – please sort this out before someone blames me."

The attitude of Dunnes management may be hard to pin on the Government, but it is the responsibility of the Taoiseach and his colleagues to stop this particular strain of exploitation from embedding itself in the culture of Irish workplaces.

In the name of one-way flexibility Dunnes employees have little clue from one week to the next how many hours’ work they will get. This makes it impossible for them to plan, not just financially but for every aspect of the lives that Dunnes would prefer they didn’t have.

They benefit from no upside to the arrangement as, according to the Mandate union, they are under pressure to be available for work at all times.

It’s the same imbalance of power that is at the heart of the “zero-hours contract” phenomenon, now an election issue in Britain. Zero-hour contracts do not guarantee workers any hours at all. They turn a slice of the labour force into the 21st century equivalent of the archetypal Depression-era man who joins the crowd outside the factory gates each day and tries to catch the foreman’s eye.

Labour leader Ed Miliband describes the 1.8 million zero-hour contracts in the UK economy as an "epidemic" and promises voters he will limit their usage to a three-month period, after which the employer will be required to offer a regular contract. The outgoing coalition has already banned the "exclusivity" clauses that were used to restrict about a fifth of zero-hour contractors from accepting offers of work elsewhere to make up the shortfall in slack weeks.

Pressed by a BBC journalist, who suggested zero-hour contracts might be suitable for those who don’t want full-time work, Miliband said the problem was that they were now “the primary way” that certain large companies did their hiring. Rather than maintaining a pool of casual workers to absorb natural ebbs and flows in demand, they use zero-hour contracts as their preferred method of treating their core workforce – with contempt.

The issue is not just the number of hours but the unpredictability of them, Miliband explained, as emphatically as he could given it was one of those TV interviews where he was obliged to talk while travelling backwards on an election battle bus.

Industrial action

The Dunnes workers who embarked on industrial action last week are not on zero- hour contracts, but ones that typically guarantee 15 hours a week. Their plight is very similar, however.

They talk of the stress of hours being “cut to almost nothing” without warning and their fear of victimisation if they have the temerity to complain. There is a big difference, as their testimony of “scraping by” attests, between working 37½ hours a week and working 15.

This is why the provisions of the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 are next to useless. They state that when employees are put out of pocket as a result of not being given the hours they were requested to work, or make themselves available to work, they must be compensated for 25 per cent of the time, or 15 hours, whichever is less. Good luck paying the bills with that.

In February, researchers at the University of Limerick’s Kemmy Business School were appointed to investigate the “prevalence and impact” of zero-hour and low- hour contracts (those that guarantee eight or fewer hours a week) across both the private and public sectors. Their task includes assessing whether or not workers have sufficient protection under the law.

Dangling for years

The Dunnes example already shows that they do not. It also demonstrates that workers don’t technically have to be employed under zero-hour contracts for bosses to find a way to keep them dangling, uncomfortably, for years, in an unconvincing effort to pretend they don’t need them.

An Irish version of “Red Ed” Miliband’s proposal, tightly limiting the length of time that workers’ hours could fluctuate so wildly for no good reason, would be more meaningful. But in any case, the number of people in Ireland who have uncertainty written into formal employment contracts is likely to be far lower than the total number who bear the brunt of toxic rostering practices.

Employers have long been accused of demanding flexibility from workers while giving little or none in return. In the depths of the recession some came to expect an even more intense combination of servitude and gratitude.

The picket lines outside Dunnes are the most visible manifestation to date of bullying behaviour that needlessly throws lives into permanent limbo. Kathy Sheridan is on leave