Zero hour contract

I have learnt a new concept called zero hour contract. By definition, it is a type of contract between an employer and an employee, where the employer is not obliged to provide minimum working hours (so the employee is not able to get a guaranteed payment), meanwhile the employee is not obliged to accept any work offered (so the employee is not in a position that he or she has to accept all the work offered). Many business leaders support the idea of zero hour contracts, as they believe such contracts will increase the flexibility of the labour market, some people who do want to receive some occasional incomes can take advantage of such contracts. In addition, people can also concentrate on the work they are willing to do and good at, no long need to accept all the work offered. This can improve productivity. Such contracts can create a more specialised matching between workers and jobs.

However, such idea can be too complicated and too idealistic, especially in some specific sectors. In a significant proportion of our jobs, we do not expect what exact kind of work we will receive, neither do the employers. In some cases, some work requires workers' creativity. Under zero hour contracts, workers' creativity is largely limited, as the contracts build a much stronger one direction relationship between workers and their employers that workers only work for their incomes to do certain jobs and such short-term and temporary contracts reduce the loyalty of workers. The incentives to be creative under a temporary employer are much more likely to be lower than under a long-term employer. Moreover, usually being creative needs workers to receive information from many different sectors and do many different kinds of jobs. Only doing certain things is not useful to improve workers' creativity, and indirectly lower the potential productivity of workers.

Overall, I do not think that zero hour contract is a good idea in many sectors.