Zero hour contracts,ghost jobs and agency workers

Raj   stays  on  Bruce  road ,Bow road  i  east  London  and  works  at  Medway mail  centre
in  Rochester, south east  England.as  an  agency  worker  of  Angard  staffing .Although  he  is  on  a  zero  hour  contract  ,he  was
had  the  opportunity  to  work  40  hours  per  week  on  a  night shift over  christmas 2014.


He  spent   half  of  his  pay  to  travel to  and  from  work but  thinks  that  it  is  better  to
work  than  to  live  perpetually  on  benefits such   as  job-seekers  allowance.
He does the same work as Medways’s own staff, and often substitutes for their absences – but is on the minimum wage; they get more  pay. They’re on a rota, while he has to wait by his phone for each shift.He  has  no  sick  pay  entitlement.


br>Normally,Raj never knows when he will be working:in october 2014, he was contactedin the morning to be told he had 45 minutes to his next shift. Nor does he know where he will be working.Medway is  over 50 miles by train, and the travel costs mean anything less than a eight -hour shift   is  the   means  his  travelling  expenses  would  exceed  his  pay for  the  shift . When he turns down suchan  offer, the agency then uses a legal loophole to class  him  him as unavailable for work and denies  him pay.

In  his article" Ghost jobs, half lives: how agency workers ‘get by’ in Britain’s shadow economy,"

(www.theGuardian.com,Jan 21 2015) Aditya  Chakrabortty,states  that with "an estimated 1.2 million agency workers   and  another   600,000 on zero-hours contracts, and you have a shadow workforce of about 1.8 million unpeople, enjoying none of the security that should come with employment in a rich country."


In  addition,he  stresses that "they are never going to be helped by prime ministerial exhortations for a pay rise. As such, they form part of the answer to one of the major conundrums in Britain: what’s gone wrong in our labour market. This Wednesday will see the monthly ritual of a jobs report showing record employment, but meagre wage rises."
The  Christmas period   was  good  for  Raj  but  that  is  over  now  and   a recent  text message from his agency  stated  that  there is  virtually  no  work  available  and  that  he  should  consider going onannual leave.


This  is the  reality  of  the  agency  worker  of  today-sheer  uncertainty.


Medway is a  region  and  a  unitary  authority.It is  located  in the southeast  of  England  and  comprises of a collection of   towns including Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham, and Rainham.The unitary Authority was formed in 1998 when the City of Rochester-upon-Medway amalgamated with Gillingham borough Council and part of Kent County Council to form a  unitary Council, a unitary authority independent of Kent County Council. In  2011,its  population  was  estimated  at 264,000,92 per cent  of  which  were  white.Blacks,Asians  and  mixed  races  comprised  8 per  cent.