Labour unveils new and improved zero-hours contract crackdown

Tomorrow Ed Miliband will unveil a significantly stronger plan to crack down on zero hours contracts – introducing legislation early in the next Parliament to ban zero hours contracts for those who are really working regular hours.

The policy Miliband will announce tomorrow gives employees the right to a regular contract after just twelve weeks. That’s a big improvement on the party’s previously announced policy of a regular contract after a year on a zero hours contract – and it’ll be legislated for in the first Queen’s Speech after the election.. That’s believed to cover 90% of all of those on zero hours contracts – and the only exemtpions will be for those who “specifically request a zero hours contract”.

Speaking at a “People’s Question Time” event in Yorkshire, Miliband will reference two of Cameron’s comments from last week’s Paxman interview – that zero hour contracts have spread because more people are choosing them, and the admission that he couldn’t live on one himself.

Here’s what Miliband is expected to say tomorrow:

“The problem of zero hours contracts is at the heart of the key question in this election: who does our country work for? Does it work just for the rich and the powerful? Or does it work for working people – the people looking for a job, trying to find enough money to support a family, to make ends meet?

“The explosion of zero hours contracts tells us the answer to that question in Britain right now. There are now three times as many people on zero hours contracts as there were when this government came to power, a 20% increase in the last year alone, 1.8 million work contracts without guaranteed hours.

“It is leaving people without a reliable income, not knowing from one day to the next how much work will be coming in, unable to plan, from one week to the next.”

“And what’s really worrying is that David Cameron isn’t worried. Why should he? It’s his plan for the economy. Do you remember what he told Jeremy Paxman last week when he was asked why are more and more people trapped on zero hours contracts?

“He didn’t say it was because low paid, low skilled work is booming on his watch. No, he said it was because people really want to be on them.

“He said people really want to be uncertain – about whether they’ll be able to pay the energy bill or not. He said people really want to be insecure – not knowing how much food they’re going to be able to put on their family’s table. He said people really want to be unsure – whether or not they’ll need to arrange child care on any given day.

“Then he admitted he couldn’t live on one himself. Well, I say, if it’s not good enough for him, it’s not good enough for you.

“And it’s not good enough for Britain either. These zero hours contracts have become a symbol of the Tories’ failing economic with stagnant wages and falling productivity leaving a recovery which isn’t reaching your front door and a deficit still at Downing Street’s door.

“Today I can announce that in our first year of government after the election, Labour will legislate for a new principle: if you are working regularly, you have legal right to a regular contract.

“We will give working people more control of their working lives, we’re going to put an end to exploitative zero hours contracts.

“Here’s how: the next Labour government will ban zero hour contracts for employees who are in practice working regular hours. This absolute new legal right to a regular contract will apply to workers after just 12 weeks.”