The Pros And Cons Of Zero Hour Contract

Zero hour contracts always arise controversial debate all around the world. It is defined as an agreement that employers can hire staff without the guarantee of work offer, while employees are not obligate to work exclusively for that company. Such contract means employers do not have pension, sick pay and other benefits. It was reported by the Office for National Statistics that more than 900,000 UK workers (2.9% of labor force) were employ on zero hours contract, and this number was expected to grow continuously.
From Marx’s viewpoint, he would be critical to the idea that zero hour contracts could provide flexible working time, and thus a demonstration of economic strength.
We can, for example, remind those who support that contract due to flexibility of the ban of hiring children. It also decreases the “flexibility” of market, but we still support that legislation. It is only fair for some students who only want to take part time job in order to combine work to study. Also, for some individual firms, it is a good choice to reduce cost by signing zero hour contracts with workers.
According to Marx’s idea, zero hour contracts may lead to class conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat. Capitalists generate
Because employees are forced to work only for the purpose of survival and get little paid, they have no incentive to improve their skills. Also, employers may suffer from low employee moral and lack of loyalty, since workers do not have any benefit. For example, a failure to accept work when employers offer it may cause the termination of zero hour contracts without any redundancy payments. Employees usually do not put too much effort on insecure jobs. All of these reasons can lead to alienation, which may reduce efficiency of production and decrease economic