Research and Study Skills for Professional Development

FAMILY NAME: Allaoui

FIRST NAME: Sam

REG NO: 1504510

ESSEX BUSINESS SCHOOL

COVER SHEET

BE901

Research and Study Skills for Professional Development

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Zero hours contracts have become a modern revelation for 21st century businesses. These contracts allow businesses to be flexible with employees working hours. But do these contracts have an overwhelming positive side to them? The answer is no. It is in fact the complete opposite.

These contracts allow the exploitation of our labour force in our country while at the same time creating uncertainty for employees in their conquest for guaranteed work every week. These employees mainly are young people who want to earn money to buy their first car or even to go out with their mates for a good meal. Zero hours contracts mean that this is no guaranteed as in a case with George Martin, who had a zero hours contract with sports direct, in which he had  ‘20 hours a week up to Christmas to having nothing for three or four months’^[1].

There is also the argument that these contracts aren’t enough to ‘ensure that they can afford to pay for their home, their food, their travel, heating and other essential living costs’^[2]. Unemployment levels in the UK are at 5.4% and so there is a bigger need for people to take up zero hour contracts whenever they can. However, ‘Almost 700,000 workers were employed on zero-hours contracts at the end of last year, while 1.8 million contracts did not guarantee a minimum number of hours^[3]’. These contracts have left the people on them suffering massively when working hours, run by businesses that use this to their benefit, aren’t available. There could also be an argument that the use of zero hour contracts by some businesses are used illegally due to the lack of rules surrounding them. It could be used as a punishment method if an employee steps out of line in which case the business can decide on decreasing their working hours.

From all this information, I can conclude that I am fully against the use of zero hours contracts due to the lack of exposure it puts on 8% of our workforce. In a modern age, I feel zero hour contracts have no place in it as people work hard daily to earn enough money to pay bills and feed their families. Not being guaranteed working hours means these people suffer and in a world where hardship and recession is happening far too often, a good contract with guaranteed working hours should be a requirement for people employed at these big multinational companies.

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