Zero tolerance for Zero hours!

I was disgusted, though not entirely surprised, to learn that the extent of the use of zero hours contracts in business was far more widespread than officially acknowledged. And it turns out that organisations that should know better, such as some charities, are also exploiting people in this appalling way.
Someone on one of these zero hours ‘contracts’ has no guarantee of the number of hours of work that will be available to them in an upcoming week. There is also often no sick pay or holiday entitlement and they may be denied permission to get extra work elsewhere. They may also be expected, at short notice, to work far from home.
Doesn’t this all tell a dreadful story about the scandalous state of commercial morality today – zero hours at the bottom and big bonuses at the top. It also says much about the credibility of official employment figures as many of those unfortunates on zero hours contracts are taken to be fully employed. It is also one more reason to account for the huge profits made by usurers such as Wonga.
One national newspaper carried the headline ‘Why stop at Zero hours? Why not revive child labour?’ But this is, of course, exactly what is happening except that child labour is outsourced, along with the original jobs, to the Far East.
The apologists for these outrages need not trumpet that it is part of commercial reality and inevitable globalisation. Both are what we make them. And we should start re-making them immediately. There should be zero tolerance for zero hours.