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Zero Hours Contracts


algy

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 A very large percentage of Sports Direct employees are students who are quite happy to work when they can and not have to work when they can't. Most of them work on a four week rota and can swap with their fellows as necessary and the employer maintains staffing levels.

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Just for interest Baz, how do these "entrepreneurs" set up a business in the first place?  Presumably they borrow from the Bank?  Then what happens if "the business" goes bust?  As for "nationalisation", it appears to be the default position when the private sector fails EG: the Banks.; and looking around our current love affair with the private sector; so-called "competition" doesn't seem to be retarding energy or rail prices. or providing security for the Olympics or a capacity to run the NHS 111 service!

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Just for interest Baz, how do these "entrepreneurs" set up a business in the first place?  Presumably they borrow from the Bank?  Then what happens if "the business" goes bust?  As for "nationalisation", it appears to be the default position when the private sector fails EG: the Banks.; and looking around our current love affair with the private sector; so-called "competition" doesn't seem to be retarding energy or rail prices. or providing security for the Olympics or a capacity to run the NHS 111 service!

 

You make more assumptions than your arch nemesis; Kije.... how do you or I know where people get money from to start a business? We never borrowed from a bank to set our business up and I'm sure many others don't either...

 

and as for the last bit; NHS111 G4S or energy and rail companies are hardly three man businesses set up in a garage in Watford.... I am talking about small businesses with a need to offer and require flexible staffing. I have already stated that big businesses should not be allowed to use staff on zero hours contracts.... please try and keep up

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Tax credits aren't a solution, they are part of the problem. How ridiculous is it to take money from working people in taxation and then give them some of it back because they aren't earning enough (and at the same time employing a small army of civil servants to oversee the whole business)? Wouldn't a better solution be to take the lowest paid out of taxation altogether by raising the tax threshold? If the minimum wage is supposed to be the lowest living wage then surely this should indicate what the tax threshold should be? I believe this is in the region of £14,000 to £15,000 per year. To finance this I suggest the government stops wasting our money on such things as foreign aid to countries like Bongobongoland (which I understand is a small country in NE Africa, population 12 million and ruled over by King etc etc).

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I always suspected you had next to no sense of humour Lt. Now it seems you're hell bent on proving it. How is using the name of a non existent country in any way derogatory?

 

Do you have any opinion on the rest of what I posted or is this just you trying to take a pot at me again?

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You could try looking in Bongo bongo land up Asp, no not trying to have ago, you used the term as it has been in the news,, Hence, why I assumed you were using it to get a reaction, Flaming, Are you saying you we're not trying to get a reaction ?,

 

When you post something funny I normally comment on it, as when you do they are normally very good and funny

 

 

 

 

In British English, Bongo Bongo Land (or Bongo-bongo Land) is a derogatory reference to Third World countries, particularly in Africa, or to a fictional such country.

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Eh Baz, one of these "?" at the end of a sentence, means it was a question NOT a statement, just asking where the start up funding comes from for these small buisinesses - just asking!   As for "nationalisation" YOU introduced the subject, just thought I'd remind you of the state of the private sector just now !

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The private sector will recover because it can diversify with working hours, pay rises or cuts etc.... the public sector when it was running the coal board, the railways etc couldn't because it was beholden to the unions who were always out for a fight and never had their members interests truly at heart; they were in it for the £100,000 a year salaries for their leaders and nights in fancy hotels

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 If the minimum wage is supposed to be the lowest living wage then surely this should indicate what the tax threshold should be? I believe this is in the region of £14,000 to £15,000 per year. .

Asp, to earn £15,000 per year on the minimum wage, people would have to work nearly 47 hours a week, that could be 47 hours more than they get on a zero hours contract. At the moment there is hardly any difference to what a person earns on a 30 hour week (Tax credits figure) at minimum wage and the tax threshold.

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The increase in the use of zero hours contracts is due almost entirely to the change in the law regarding agency workers a few yeasr ago. This change required employers to give agency workers exactly the same rights and benefits as permanent employees (including pay scales, sick pay, holiday pay, pension entitlement, redundancy etc) after a qualifying period.

 

While I have no argument with that, I was an agency contractor working permanently for the same client for many years myself, the last government ignored all the advice it was given and set the qualifying period at 12 weeks instead of the 6 or 12 months recommendation which came out of the consultation with unions, employers and agencies.

 

The upshot is that employers are now much more reluctant to use agency staff to cover anything but the very shortest seasonal peaks in their workload - because seasonal peaks in most industries can easily exceed 12 weeks - so instead they take on maybe 50% more staff than they think they're going to need, put them all on zero hours contracts, and then offer up the shifts on a week by week basis as required. This produces competition between the staff for those shifts and leads to all the problems of staff feeling that they can't exploit the "flexibility" of a zero hours contract by turning down shifts for fear that they won't get offered them in future.

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You could try looking in Bongo bongo land up Asp, no not trying to have ago, you used the term as it has been in the news,, Hence, why I assumed you were using it to get a reaction, Flaming, Are you saying you we're not trying to get a reaction ?,

 

When you post something funny I normally comment on it, as when you do they are normally very good and funny

 

 

 

 

In British English, Bongo Bongo Land (or Bongo-bongo Land) is a derogatory reference to Third World countries, particularly in Africa, or to a fictional such country.

The first time I ever heard the term Bongobongo land was on this thread, I had to look up the "News" item rolleyes.gif to find out what the fuss is all about. Well they do call this the "silly season" in newspaper circles. Why would I be trying to get a reaction in any case? The term has already been used in public by people with a far larger readership than me. Anyone who takes offence at a name for a fictional country really needs to change their medication. I really don't understand why you are getting on your high horse Lt.

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Asp, to earn £15,000 per year on the minimum wage, people would have to work nearly 47 hours a week, that could be 47 hours more than they get on a zero hours contract. At the moment there is hardly any difference to what a person earns on a 30 hour week (Tax credits figure) at minimum wage and the tax threshold.

So you think it's right that someone who has earned his pay by the sweat of his brow should have to give a good portion of it to the greedy government and then go cap in hand to the same government to ask for some of it back so he/she can feed the family? A socialist Utopia!

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The increase in the use of zero hours contracts is due almost entirely to the change in the law regarding agency workers a few yeasr ago. This change required employers to give agency workers exactly the same rights and benefits as permanent employees (including pay scales, sick pay, holiday pay, pension entitlement, redundancy etc) after a qualifying period.

 

While I have no argument with that, I was an agency contractor working permanently for the same client for many years myself, the last government ignored all the advice it was given and set the qualifying period at 12 weeks instead of the 6 or 12 months recommendation which came out of the consultation with unions, employers and agencies.

 

The upshot is that employers are now much more reluctant to use agency staff to cover anything but the very shortest seasonal peaks in their workload - because seasonal peaks in most industries can easily exceed 12 weeks - so instead they take on maybe 50% more staff than they think they're going to need, put them all on zero hours contracts, and then offer up the shifts on a week by week basis as required. This produces competition between the staff for those shifts and leads to all the problems of staff feeling that they can't exploit the "flexibility" of a zero hours contract by turning down shifts for fear that they won't get offered them in future.

 

Another work practice that has come in in recent years to facilitate & speed up the loss of workers rights  has been the alteration to the redundancy laws that allows people to be made redundant even though their job has not disappeared ,as was the original meaning of  "redundancy", & then replaced almost immediately by agency or temporary staff, frequently from eastern European countries. Usually the best of the bunch are then cherry picked  & the remainder transferred to a less  lucrative contract by their agency gang masters.

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So you think it's right that someone who has earned his pay by the sweat of his brow should have to give a good portion of it to the greedy government and then go cap in hand to the same government to ask for some of it back so he/she can feed the family? A socialist Utopia!

 

Greedy government, some of us like the National health service amongst other things Asp.

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So you think it's right that someone who has earned his pay by the sweat of his brow should have to give a good portion of it to the greedy government

No, if you read it properly the first time, what I said was there is hardly any difference between what someone earns over 30 hours on minimum wage and the tax threshold so there isn't any  portion to give to the greedy government never mind a good portion. 

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If you want to talk "salaries" Baz, best looking at the private sector bosses, starting with golden parachutes and bonuses in the City !

 

Those are a small minority of private sector bosses.... the ones running the big corporations and companies and who make up about 2% of all employers..... the 98% of businesses do not enjoy 6 figure salaries I can tell you but the lefties always use the minority as the example not the small business owner that remortgages his house to keep his business going and who hasn't had a holiday for 5 years; unlike his employees to whom he has to legally give holiday pay and time off, paternity leave, compassionate leave etc.....

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