Into each day, outrage must fall. Today Iain Duncan Smith has performed the service of upsetting everyone by telling Sky News that zero-hours contracts should be rebranded ‘flexible-hours contracts’. The Work and Pensions Secretary said:
‘I think, with respect, the media and others have got this completely wrong, the flexible-hours contracts I’m talking about which are named ‘zero-hours contracts’, they are taking by people who want that flexibility. The reality is what we’ve had from Labour is a series of scare stories about these.’
Whatever you fancy calling these contracts, they have been rising in salience as a political issue to the extent that the Tories, who did regard them as a ‘niche issue’, have had to announce a ‘crackdown’ on exploitative ones that tie a worker exclusively to one company, therefore meaning that they cannot take on more work with someone else, even when their boss is repeatedly texting them to say there are no shifts that day.
Some of them are, as Iain Duncan Smith says, very useful for those who take them on as they give them flexibility to care for family members.
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