Been in the news a lot recently, e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/05/zero-hours-contracts-cover-1m-uk-workers
From 2000 - 2002 I worked part time in retail, in a chain corner shop type place. I was doing A-Levels then and usually did one evening a week and one full day at weekend, usually more during the holidays or to cover other staff being off. I didnt even have a contract but if I did it would have been zero hours because managers could just change the rota at will.
From 2002 - 2006 I was at university and had a lot of casual jobs from restaurants to bars, cafes and market research. Again all zero hour contracts, it wasnt unusual to turn up for a shift, do an hour and then for a manager to send half the staff home if it was a quiet night. Not all the other people I worked with were students and most of us, except people still living with parents, had bills / rent to pay so it could be a real pain to not get any hours. On another occasion, one of the bars I worked in decided to close for a month one January and if you were full time you had to take all your annual leave then (tough luck if you were hoping to save some for the summer!) or if you were on a casual contract you just didnt get paid for a month.
I worked in Belfast and Glasgow, and I have friends who had very similar experiences in London, Newcastle, Leeds, Edinburgh etc, some of whom were on these types of contracts for very big coffee / retail chains.
I'm definitely not saying it's right and it would def make family budgeting unbelievably difficult (I had no kids then but do now so I can appreciate how tough arranging things like childcare on a zero hour contract would be). But what I am wondering about is surely this is not a new phenomenon? Didnt anyone else work these kind of jobs / contracts before now? I wonder why this didnt seem so newsworthy before but also how smaller businesses with a much more varied cash flow are supposed to survive otherwise?
Interested to hear other people's experiences of this...