Job anyone?
Yes? Good! Wait by the door with your cap in you hand and we’ll call you when
we need you. If we call you we’ll pay you. Maybe. A bit. Not much though, times
are hard. We’re all in it together.
Better than
being on benefits, isn’t it. This way we’re not obliged to give you a cent, a penny,
a dime. And we don’t have to worry about all that expensive red tape,
bureaucracy. Things like sick pay, holiday pay.
Some 90% - 20,000 of the people employed by Sports
Direct - are on these contracts. The remainder are in line for big bonuses, if
they keep their noses clean and don’t upset the boss.
But if you
DO upset the boss and get sacked there’s always the Employment Tribunal. Or at
least there was. Now they’ve changed the rules so you have to pay a fat fee to
even think about lodging an appeal. Good people in the Coalition.
The
percentage of employers in the UK
They
include most workers in the care industry, and a high proportion working for hotel,
catering and leisure companies. No customers means no shifts, no hours and
no pay.
Austerity
programmes cutting spending in the public sector meant that NHS trusts began to
issue zero-hours contracts to professional staff and make them fight it out for
shifts.
Radiologists,
psychiatrists and heart specialists found themselves in staff "banks"
that trusts could draw on when demand peaked.
This trend
is part of a universal, worldwide downward pressure on jobs and real incomes
resulting from the 2007-8 crash.
You can see
it behind the news that the number of jobless in the eurozone fell for the
first time in more than two years in June, but the unemployment rate stayed at
a record 12.1%.
The total
number of unemployed people in the wider EU fell by 32,000 to 26.42 million.
But just like in the United
States
Even so,
the youth unemployment rate is now at 58.7% in Greece
and 56.1% in Spain
The US
Federal Reserve has just announced that it will continue adding to the $2
trillion dollars of credit it has pumped into the economy since the crash. Jobs
are increasing by 200,000 a month as a result yet are failing to close the gap
of 8.7 million lost as a result of the crash.
But, as
Daniel Alpert, former merchant and investment banker, turned financial
consultant points out, over 69% of the jobs created in April-June 2013 and over
57% of all the jobs created in the first half of 2013 were in the three lowest
wage sub-sectors of the economy.
About half
of the jobs created during the first half of 2013, and a large majority of the
jobs created in April-June, appear to have been part-time jobs that offer
employees as little as one hour of work per week, and up to 35 hours of work.
And the
number of people saying they are working part time because they can’t find full
time work crept back up to 8.2 million – double pre-recession levels.
Alpert now
specialises in bankruptcy and restructuring – “thinking outside the box” to
provide “novel and workable solutions to unique financial challenges”.
He’s got a
new book out next month: The Age of
Oversupply: Overcoming the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy.
Just can’t
wait to find out what new ideas he has for the huge numbers of people made
surplus to requirements by the crisis of capitalist production.
Gerry Gold
Economics
editor
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