These are contracts workers sign with their employer. The employer offers them a contract for full-time work but there is no guarantee they will get 40 hours every week. For example, one week a worker might get 40 hours and the next week only 15 hours or even zero hours. However, they have to be available for work so cannot get another part-time job. To make it worse, workers are not well paid, usually only getting the minimum wage of $14.75 an hour. It is impossible for most people to budget for food, rent, transport, and so on when they don’t know how much they will be paid each week. It’s also impossible to make mortgage payments regularly if they want to buy a house.
The kind of jobs which offer zero-hour contracts are in the fast food industry. However, one company – Restaurant Brands – which owns KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and Carl’s Jr, has now agreed to stop this kind of contract. Instead, workers will be guaranteed work for at least 80% of the average time that they have worked for the previous 3 months. This decision was made after the Unite Union talked to the company, and the company agreed it was better to have workers stay in their business long term.
Some other companies like McDonalds, Wendy’s and Burger King have not yet decided whether to stop zero-hour contracts.
Vocabulary
• guarantee (v and n) – promise
• budget (v and n) – decide each week how much to spend on food, clothes etc.
• mortgage (v, n, adj) – a loan from the bank to pay for a house