David Cameron visits Colchester Plus in Colchester. Flickr/The Prime Minister's Office. Some rights reserved.
The election campaign has been dominated by the topic of zero-hours contracts. Yet, our political leaders have been a source of much confusion (sometimes deliberate, sometimes because they themselves are confused) with regards to understanding both this problem and its solution.
Zero-hours contracts are ‘employee contracts that do not guarantee a minimum number of hours.’ Interestingly, such employment has existed for decades; in fact 20 years ago Tony Blair promised to end zero-hours contracts. Strangely though they have only become the focus of major media and political interest in the last 18 months, following a July 2013, newspaper exposé on a major retailer which was found to be employing 90% of their 23,000-workers in this way.
