Zero hours contracts are increasingly spreading across the water, environment and transport sectors, bringing insecurity and exploitation of staff, the service group conference heard.
Oya Ozmenis, for West Yorkshire transport said: “There may be people for whom zero hours contracts suit their working lives. But for the majority of people in the general working population, it means they run the risk of unpredictable hours and earnings.
“The majority of those on zero hours contracts earn less than the living wage. In the transport sector we are seeing a rise in the use of zero hours contracts – for data collection teams but also for staff in the smart ticketing teams.”
She pointed out that the balance of power favours the employer and makes it harder for workers to complain. With more than a million workers now estimated to be employed on zero hours contracts in both the public and private sectors, this is a key issue for UNISON, delegates heard.
Andrew Goring, for the WET executive asked: “How can you budget when you don’t know from one week to the next how much money is coming in?
“Zero hours contracts are an excuse for lazy managers who don’t know enough about their sectors to plan the work properly.”
And Lisa Harrison, from Yorkshire water branch told of a customer who had called recently and said he couldn’t make a payment because last month he had hardly worked any hours.
“I was able to renegotiate his payment plan, but not every other company can be as flexible as this,” she said.
“How is any single man or woman or family supposed to budget and plan for the future?”
Delegates welcomed Labour leader Ed Miliband’s call for an end to the exploitation involved in zero hours and agreed to call on all of UNISON to work together to end the scourge of these contracts.
In a full conference agenda, delegates also agreed to:
- continue to campaign for a moratorium on funding cuts in the Environment Agency, which have already seen a reduction of 25 per cent in the workforce;
- investigate and report on the development of “combined authorities” to administer public transport;
- campaign to protect the provision of bus passes for pensioners;
- review organisation and branch structures in the Environment Agency after consultation with members;
- develop a recruitment and organising strategy aimed at increasing membership and participation of women, black, disabled and LGBT workers;
- put equality at the heart of the bargaining agenda, recognising that government austerity cuts are undermining equal opportunities at work;
- support a campaign for free, convenient and safe access to public conveniences for mobile workers.