Post
by kungfufighter » Sun Aug 25, 2019 6:51 am
Let's look at zero hour contracts, the UK, the EU and a bit of history.
Zero hours contracts: is the UK "the odd one out"?
Published: 26th Jul 2016
Around a dozen other European countries have banned zero hours contracts.
Conclusion
Not all have an explicit ban, but it’s correct that most EU countries outlaw these contracts, heavily restrict them, or don’t see them widely used. The UK is one of around half a dozen European countries where zero hours contracts are both legal and fairly common.
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History repeating: zero-hours contracts and the strike of 1889
As low-paid workers become increasingly unprotected, the working conditions of the 20th century could become a mere historical blip.
Robert Greer
17 June 2015
By 1888, working conditions in the London docks were at crisis point. A new dock had been opened eastward down the Thames at Tilbury in Essex, and those in charge of the new dock began a rate war against the St Katherine, East and West India docks in an attempt to lure business away. It was the turning of the tide for London as an industrial port city, and the beginning of the slow death of the London docks leading to their final closure in the 1960s.
The effect of the shortage of work this caused draws an interesting parallel with events in present day Britain.
Competition for work in the docks became rife, and an abundance of labourers in an environment with little work led to a great deal of manipulation by those that employed people to unload and transport cargo.
Work was allocated by a system of “call-ons”, where many hundreds of men were herded into wooden pulpits to wait for 20-30 tickets. Only those with tickets were allowed entrance to the docks to work, and this work could be for an hour or a day.
The hourly wage plummeted, and the uncertainty of work was such that while a docker in 1872 took home an average of 24S, his counterpart in 1888 averaged just 7S.
These conditions led to extreme poverty and deprivation in the already slum- and hunger-ridden East End, and resulted in the great strike of 1889, during which newly formed unions successfully fought for stable working agreements and better pay.
Ben Tillett, one of the dockworkers who led the strike, later wrote about the atmosphere in the pulpits when waiting for the bi-daily call-ons. “Coats, flesh and even ears were torn off. The strong literally threw themselves over the heads of their fellows and battled… through the kicking, punching, cursing crowds to the rails of the “cage” which held them like rats – mad human rats who saw food in the ticket.”
In short, uncertainty and poverty caused people to turn against one another.
A familiar situation
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Don't worry, breaking away from the EU and tying a tighter knot with our colonial cousins and China will save us...
Up the workers!