“I don’t know how much I’m earning next week"
Precariousness
Fraser told the TUC: “I've had times before where I’ve worked 50 plus hours, I think 56 is the most hours I’ve worked in a week, and I’ve also worked zero, and it’s the same contract.
“I don’t know how much I’m earning next week and I don’t know how much I’m earning the week after that and there can be such huge disparities.
“It creates such a big informal power imbalance between you and your boss because you know your income is entirely dependent on something that you have no control over.”
Work-life balance
“I could get a text now from my boss saying I want you to come in at 8 am tomorrow morning, even though I’m not scheduled on, but if my boss texts me that and I don’t accept it, even though I don’t want to do it, I might not be given any hours next week.
“For example, I was at a music festival last year and I got a text from my boss saying ‘you’re coming in tomorrow’, even though I’d said I wasn’t going to be around this week, and he said, ‘well you’re coming in anyway’. So, I had to leave the festival and go back, because if I didn't I might just not be given any hours ever again. It is very much something that happens.”
Financial struggles
Fraser continued: “Renting is a big issue, as a young person I’m in private rent and that’s really difficult. A lot of landlords make it hard for people on zero-hours contracts because you show them a proof of income and they know that your hours could just disappear at any minute, you’ve got really no protection.
“I always try and save money whenever I can because tomorrow I could stop getting hours and I might not know when I’ll get them again.
“I know how much rent I have to pay at the end of the month and how much my bills are, but it’s like, well what if my boss just doesn’t give me the hours for that, what am I going to do?
“It creates this really difficult situation on a zero hours-contracts, it’s so hard to plan bits of your life.”
Weaponisation by bad bosses
“The biggest thing that I find in the workplace is the confident knowledge that my relationship with my boss basically determines how many hours I’m going to get.
“On a zero hours-contract my boss can say ‘I want you to go do this’ with something that’s not on my official job title. A big one I’d get working at a hotel was being asked to pick up bits of housekeeping work that wasn’t part of my job description, but I also knew that if my boss isn’t in a good mood with me then I might just get no hours next week.
“I think it makes it much harder for people to want to rock the boat,” added Fraser.
“Noone even wants to raise even a legitimate concern because, even if your claim is legitimate, legally your boss can make your hours disappear, they don’t need to provide a justification for why you’ve worked less hours.
“It makes it so much harder to do trade union organising because the precariousness can always be weaponised against the people doing a trade union campaign, and even just organic leaders in the workplace. The people who notice issues and stand up for their co-workers, they are the ones that are going to be losing hours.”
Unionising the sector
“I welcome a ban, completely get rid of them, they undermine everything,” said Fraser. “There’s a generation of young people who are getting used to being in work with no protected organising, basically no rights, very little way of challenging stuff, and it goes all the way up.
“I’ve got a lot of mates working in well paid secure jobs, but because their first job was in hospitality its shaped their experience of the world of work and also trade unions and the ability to organise, it really does worry me the amount of people like myself who have just been stuck in a sector like that.
“This is why I’m in Unite and done my reps training even though we’ve not got a recognition agreement yet, we’ve got members and I’ve been involved in some of the Unite campaigns because it’s so important to organise the sector.
“Because if we allow sectors like hospitality not to organise then it will just become the blueprint to every other sector of the economy. As a trade union movement, we have to tackle this head on.”
“I massively welcome the ban on ZHCs but I worry only collective organising is going to implement that, you know, nobody is going to walk into work after ZHCs get banned and their boss is like, fantastic here is your new contract.
“It’s not going to change almost anywhere unless people A, are educated around their rights, which in hospitality with such low union density lots of people aren’t, and B are able to take action against their bosses.
“Because there is that informal power imbalance because of the lack of developed rights for a lot of workers, how do we enforce it when bosses are essentially just keeping people on ZHCs. I think that’s why, yes it’s good that the law is changing but the way we sort this out isn’t just through a government changing the law, it has to be through workers getting clued up on what their rights are and organising with their colleagues.”