Over the course of the last week, the Labour Party has provided more details on plans to deliver its New Deal for Working People, including recommitting to their promise to ban exploitative zero-hour contracts.

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves made clear today that should they win the General Election, the next Labour Government would introduce legislation to do so within 100 days of taking office giving all workers a right to guaranteed regular hours after 12 weeks. This would include an option for individuals to remain on zero-hour contracts if they want to.

This partly reflects recent Work Foundation recommendations on how zero-hour arrangements could best be kerbed. In March this year, we proposed ensuring that the power to choose a zero-hour arrangement rests with the employee, who could do so via a flexible working request for a fixed time period. Crucially this would be underpinned by the right to revert to a contract that reflects actual hours worked – protecting people from undue pressure to take up casual arrangements if that is not what they want.

With a record number of 1.1 million people on zero-hour contracts, unions are right to insist that steps are taken to ensure any new laws cannot be ‘gamed’ by unscrupulous employers. Our recent proposals set-out ways to guard against this.

Contracted hours from day one

It is important that legislation provides a right to contractual hours from day one in a job so people know what they are signing up to. This in effect means jobs should not be designed or advertised as zero-hour roles but should lay out minimum guaranteed hours.

We can learn from Germany here, who apply a default of 20 hours per week for on-call work unless a different number is stipulated. To still allow flexibility in shift patterns for changing demand, we proposed that minimum hours could be presented as an average over a monthly or quarterly period, for example, rather than being a fixed number per week.

Protect workers from being pressured into casual arrangements

Second, if people will be allowed to opt in to zero-hour arrangements as Labour are suggesting, this has to be on a temporary basis and their right to a contract with hours must still be maintained.

As part of the zero-hour ban in Ireland, ad-hoc work is allowed in certain circumstances but people who don't have hours specified by their employer still have a right to something called a 'banded contract' that designates an appropriate band (e.g. 6-11 hours, 11-16 hours, and so on, per week). This helps to guard against people being pressured into casual work, or employers giving out contracts with very few hours whilst expecting people to work more.

To monitor, data is needed

Third, we need data. HMRC is currently consulting on how to amend legislation to require employers to disclose real time information on the hours their workforce work as part of payroll data, including for hourly paid workers. What may seem like a minor technical change could make a huge difference in enabling better regulation protecting workers. If used well, automated monitoring of working hours could flag employers with high numbers of low-hour or variable-hour staff, for closer inspection.

Our proposals also recommend requiring large employers to disclose information on the employment models they use as part of annual reporting, as they do with their gender pay gaps.

Enforcement is vital

Fourth, it is important that labour market enforcement is brought into a single body so the data HMRC has at its fingertips can be properly acted on. This needs funding to increase the number of labour inspectorates (the UK needs to more than double its numbers if we want to be in line with standards set by the International Labour Organisation). Inspectorates could use AI to monitor job adverts to detect employers who might be in breach of the rules – flagging up repeat instances of vacancies listed without working hours stipulated.

But not all enforcement agents are employed by the state. Workers themselves, through trade unions, are well placed to guard against employment breaches. The problem is swathes of workplaces in the private sector, where most low paid insecure jobs are, have little or no union presence. To solve this, employers should be required to allow access to workplaces for unions, provide local and online contact points, and inform workers of their right to representation.

Done well, these measures would help to devolve the enforcement of employment regulation to workplaces and sectors in which they are breached, leaving more resources at a national level to focus on the most vulnerable workers and most egregious employers.

In outlining the Labour Party’s intentions today, the Shadow Chancellor points out, as we have in our paper, that many businesses already go beyond the standards outlined in the New Deal for Working People. While this is true, all employers and workers need confidence that new regulations will be applied fairly and be properly enforced – only then will the changes succeed in banning exploitative zero-hour contracts.

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