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Businesses slam 'threat to flexible labour market'

Open-access content Monday 13th April 2015 — updated 4.00pm, Tuesday 26th May 2020

13 April 2015


Labour's plans to overhaul zero-hours contracts have been attacked in an open letter from 100 business leaders.

 

Labour has pledged to reform the much-criticised zero-hours contracts and should it win the election, Ed Miliband has promised to introduce legislation that would force employers to give staff permanent contracts if they have already completed 12 weeks' continuous zero-hours work.

 

The Labour leader said the move would end the growing "epidemic" of zero-hours contracts. 

 

Changing the law would mean that 92 per cent of people on zero-hours contracts would be able to have a permanent job, he said. Exemptions would extend only to agency nurses who request the contracts so they can work at another hospital as well as their usual job.

 

But in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, business leaders have branded the idea a major threat to the UK's flexible labour market.

 

The British Chambers of Commerce called the move "heavy handed".

 

Christian May, head of communications and campaigns at the Institute of Directors, said: "A cross-party consensus has already emerged that would ban the use of exclusivity clauses, but limiting the use of a zero-hours contract to just 12 weeks would apply rigid controls on an important element of our flexible labour market."

 

CBI director-general John Cridland was also critical of the plans. He said: "The UK's flexible jobs market has given us an employment rate that is the envy of other countries, so proposals to limit flexible contracts to 12 weeks are wide of the mark. Of course action should be taken to tackle abuses, but demonising flexible contracts is playing with the jobs that many firms and many workers value and need."

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