Throughout my adult life I have been employed on zero-hour contracts. For the most part, I have been insulated from the worst effects of precarity, as I have been lucky enough to have good health. But many of my co-workers have not been so lucky.
I have seen chronically ill colleagues drag themselves through shifts that nobody should ever have to endure. On one occasion I found a colleague bent over in pain who had come to work because she couldn’t afford to lose the pay from a three hour shift. Another colleague developed an incurable lung condition because he was forced to sleep on public transport. He would regularly disappear to the toilets to hide his hacking cough.
These people are not Amazon employees, but ushers at a publicly funded theatre. Our employer is outwardly progressive – the theatre strives to feature the work of BME writers and artists (although last year there were more writers named Simon than there were women). It recently dropped a sponsorship deal with a big oil company, and is working hard to lower its carbon footprint.
