Zero hour contracts would work fine but my problem and many other people's problems is that their manager or other superiors do not follow the rules of zero hour contracts. They "forget" you still get Sick pay (based on hours done), holiday pay and most importantly they seem to forget that you can refuse work offered to you, so simple requests such as asking for a couple days off three weeks from now get rejected and it feels like there's nothing you can do about it. Zero hour contracts are so heavily abused it's unreal, I'm actually ashamed of my government for not seeing the massive problems they could cause before they allowed them to go through. I'd happily tell the country how terrible they really are.

The only people that I hear saying that zero hour contracts are a good thing are the people "WHO DO NOT NEED TO DO THEM"....I am a full time employee that works along side zero hours contract workers and believe me. they are exploited,I have seen many instances.... some of them have been employed for 6+ years......come on, give them a proper contract ,if you cant afford to, you shouldnt be in in business slavery was abolished years ago ...or have we forgotten?

Great reporting thanks very much this will be very useful for an essay I'm working on

the problem is that rules are unknown by the employers. transparency does not exist and contracts do not have to be written and if it is, it has clauses that are actually unlawful on zero hour contracts... like day off request cannot be guaranteed..... if the employee is not obliged to accept any work offered (key rule on zero hour contracts) then how the hell can the employer deny a day off request???? McDonald's employees in the UK are in fact not on zero hour contracts, but the media, the internet are full of articles stating they are. FACT: zero hour contract is an agreement between the employer and the employee where the employer is not obliged to offer any work, whilst the employee is not obliged to accept any work offered. As per the McDonald's staff hand book, day off request cannot be guaranteed, availability change request can be denied, and the employees do have to do the shifts they are given, hence it cannot legally be a zero hour contract. They only try to make people believe this, so that they will not complain about their hours. The company reserves the right to increase or decrease the hours, but it does never ever anywhere says that it would not give you any hours a week or even if it were a zero hour contract. Of course it never appears anywhere, simply because it is NOT one of them.