Associated Press
There has been a 6% rise in the use of zero hours contracts by UK businesses in the last year, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows.
The ONS said businesses used 1.5 million zero-hours contracts to employ staff in January this year, compared with 1.4 million a year earlier.
The data, collected in January, is the first that can be directly compared to a previous point in time, the ONS said.
But it added the rise in contracts was “not statistically significant”.
Zero-hours contracts do not guarantee a minimum number of hours of employment and many argue they offer greater flexibility in working patterns.
But the contracts have proved controversial with the Labour party promising to ban them earlier this year if it won the general election.
The ONS said there had also been a rise in the number of people employed on zero-hours contracts.
It estimated that 744,000 people, or 2.4%, of those in employment between April and June 2015, were employed on zero-hours contracts up from 624,000, or 2%, for the same period a year earlier.
That represented a 19% rise year-on-year but the ONS again warned that it was impossible to say how much of the increase was due to greater recognition of the term “zero-hours contracts” rather than a rise in new contracts.
Source:
http://ift.tt/1JLAOVS
center>The Late News from http://ift.tt/1hcVlmn