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A MAJOR REPORT on Irish employment legislation has been published today, finding a serious problem around uncertainty over hours available to workers.
‘Zero-hour contracts’, which have been at the root of much controversy in the United Kingdom, were found to be “not common” in the Irish system.
Rather, problems have come up with so-called ‘If and When’ contracts.
This difference between the two is that with zero-hour contracts employees are contractually obliged to make themselves available, while under If and When contracts employees still work non-guaranteed hours, but do not have to be available.
The research was carried out by the University of Limerick (UL) and has been put out by Minister for Business and Employment Ged Nash.
Who does this most impact on?
The report takes a broad look at employment, focusing on retail, hospitality, education and health.
The sectors found to be the main culprits when it comes to If and When contracts were the accommodation/food sector and the retail sector.
Also, the irregular contracts were found to be an issue in certain jobs within the education sector, specifically with third-level lecturing and substitution work, and the health sector, with difficulties for community care work and general practice nursing.
Figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that around 5.3% of Irish employees currently have no idea what hours they will be working.
Across the part-time sector, around 2% of employees work between 1 and 8 hours a week, 6% work between 9 and 18 hours a week, and 24% work between 19 and 35 hours a week.
What sort of damage do these contracts do?
Although If and When contracts are not as heavily weighted in favour of the employer as zero-hour contracts, they still present a number of challenges.
Workers are made to contend with unpredictability in both their schedules and their income, making a work – life balance a challenge.
This can then have a knock of effect for those hoping to access social welfare benefits and parents working with these contracts have to contend with costly childcare.
What needs to be done about all of this?
As part of its report UL has made a number of suggestions about what needs to change.
Included in these are:
Speaking about the findings, Minister Nash said: “The independent study by UL has found that zero-hour contracts are not extensively used in Ireland. However, it is worrying that the UL study suggests increasing use of If and When contracts that, when used inappropriately, drive precarious working conditions”.
These contracts can have the effect of undermining the protections afforded to workers on zero-hour contracts, where they must be compensated for 25% or 15 hours of the time they had to make themselves available.
A consultation is now set to take place between employers, trade unions and other interested parties, with recommendations being brought to the cabinet early in the new year.
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Sheldon Cooper taught me what vexillology is!
@ObsidianShine: me too!
I was in the audience for one of the first tapings of this in RTÉ. We were in the outside area drinking the complimentary red wine waiting to go in and spotted Gay, went over to say hello and he couldn’t have been more unfriendly. Walked away when we tried to say hello. Also, there was minimum interaction with us the audience during long taping of this show..came across cold and unfriendly! That’s my memory from 20 years ago!
@Dave Collins: I was never really a fan of his but to give Gaybo his due he was probably preparing mentally for the show.
@Dave Collins: baffles the mind that he hadn’t time to get to know everyone that approached him from the audience and and have a chat
@Dave Collins: OK Dave.
That lunula question is always in my mind with the Irish ‘Millionaire’. It always seemed to have more difficult questions compared to the UK version at the time, maybe in hindsight because its amazing we would ever have the budget to give out high prizes consistently compared to the UK or US.
I’d give Delaney the Late Late Show gig
Affable and capable guy .
@Quentin Moriarty: are you on drugs ??
@Paul O’Sullivan: better than the oak Tubridy
@Quentin Moriarty: I’ll take a bag of whatever you’re taking Quentin
@Quentin Moriarty: maybe but I’d give it to Sharon Ni Bheolain……
It was far too difficult from the get go.
In England you’d coast to £1000 just to have a default win.
Gaybo would send you off to slay a dragon with a spatula to get to €100.
Unfortunately for gaybo it was shocking. People spending 15 minutes on a question. Jaysus
I remember one episode in which someone used his 50/50 on a question before asking the audience. A large number of the audience voted for the two answers that had been eliminated. I don’t think the audience were necessarily any worse than the UK audience, but whoever was responsible for setting up the machine made a mess of it.
One thing for sure RTE are great for making copy cat shows.
1/1 not bad!
That exact ‘lunula’ question was asked again by Clarkson on the British version recently. Can’t remember if heart was given as an option but fingernail was the answer
That wasn’t the only time a question with two right answers were given as options. A contestant (who was a computer programmer, by coincidence) was asked what a group of binary digits are called. The obvious answer was “byte”, but “nibble” was also given as an option. Ok the spelling is slightly different but still…
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