Zero Tolerance for Zero Hours

Burning with discontent, trade unionists and socialists joined in a national day of action on Saturday against corporate scroungers who are content with exploiting their workers with zero-hour contacts. Locally, more than fifty people gathered in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, to highlight the oppressive conditions at Sports Direct’s regional warehouse.

This modern-day work house employs around 5,000 people, ninety percent of whom have been forced onto zero-hour contracts under horrific conditions and low pay. Just one recent horror story of the type of exploitation that is all too common at SportsDirect being the case of a female employee who gave birth in the toilets at work, and then carried on working!

The protest on Saturday was organised by Youth Fight for Jobs who are working in coordination with the Bakers’, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU) as part of the Fast Food Rights coalition. The intention of this day of action being to raise awareness of the issues surrounding ‘new’ forms of outrageous exploitation, and to pressure Sports Direct to provide decent jobs,’ guaranteed hours, proper contracts, and decent pay.

Saturday’s day of action played a critical role in current attempts being made by Unite the Union to unionise workers suffering under the duress of zero-hour contracts. The ongoing campaign also aims to emulate the successful activism undertaken by members of the Bakers’, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU) working under intolerable zero-hour contracts at Hovis, and the current work to unionise Greggs workers in a similar position. (For more on these cases, see “Bakers rise against Hovis: Victory shows zero-hours can be beaten” and “Bakers union launches fast food rights campaign.”)

Workers are societies real wealth-producers, with their bosses just being thieves by another name. If such bosses, like Mike Ashley of Sports Direct, say they cannot afford to pay their workers a living wage with fair contracts, then why should such bosses be allowed to take a ‘wage’ by destroying the lives of their employees.

Get involved with the campaign for justice now, and work with socialists to ensure that all employers pay their workers a minimum of £10 an hour with guaranteed hours. If socialist Seattle city Councillor Kshama Sawant can campaign for $15 an hour in America, then £10 a hour seems more than reasonable here in England.