No Hours Guaranteed, No Pay Secured, No Employment Rights: The Social Implications of the Rise of Zero-Hours Contracts for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Women in the UK Labour Market

This paper addresses the social implications of an increasing use of Zero Hours Contracts (ZHCs) in the UK, and its specific impacts on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) women. Workers on ZHCs have no set number of hours and therefore their income is not secured; furthermore they often have no sick and no holiday pay. The nature of this contract takes away rights related to dismissal as employers can simply reduce the number of hours to zero but still keep workers ‘on call’. In summer 2013, the use of ZHCs in the UK attracted media’s attention after the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development estimated that 1 million workers were concerned. A sharp rise in the implementation of this type of contract was observed in recent years, especially in the care sector in the context of the privatisation of public services and the commodification of care.

The paper explores working conditions under ZHCs in the care sector and aims at shedding light on how precarisation of the workforce affects in particular BAME women in a segmented labour market. Concepts such as institutional racism, ethnic penalties, and intersectional discrimination inform the analysis. This paper also looks into the role of trade unions in supporting their members on ZHCs and informing the public debate.

Whilst being empirically grounded in an on-going fieldwork with trade union officers and BAME workers, which is expected to be completed in February 2014, the analysis also draws on earlier studies on vulnerable and precarious workers (TUC, 2008; European Foundation, 2010; McKay et al., 2012), ethnic penalties (Heath and Cheung, 2007; Raymond and Modood, 2007), as well as care regimes and gendered work (Pfau-Effinger and Rostgaard, 2011; Dahl et al., 2011; Simonazzi, 2009; Bettio and Plantenga, 2004).