ZERO HOUR CONTRACTS

Employers are constantly looking for ways to exploit workers.  The focus for many years has been on outsourcing and its worst manifestation:  Labour broking, as we have dealt with in the matter of David Victor & 200 others v CHEP Equipment SA.

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With increasing regulation of labour broking, and the workers' fights against it, employer have turned to zero hour contracts.

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There is nothing more vicious than a zero hours contract and while there is a growing movement against it in other countries, South Africa is happy to let this practice thrive.

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Zero hour contracts are contracts that do not give workers minimum working hours, meaning that a person is technically employed in a job but may be called to work very rarely - sometimes for zero hours in a week or even in a month.  The worker has no control over when they get called, they must just cross their fingers and hope they do get called to work, because if they are not called to work, they do not get paid.

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Casual lawyers represented 92 Ferrero employees in the first successful case against zero hour contracts between 2018 and 2020.

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The workers, mostly women, work at the Ferrero factory in the Vaal.  Many European companies have been setting their factories up in these areas, taking advantage of the high levels of unemployment in the area (and so people's desperation for work).

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In Turkey, the Ferrero factory uses child labour:  https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/20/are-ferrero-rocher-chocolates-tainted-by-child-labour

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In South Africa, the Ferrero factory uses zero hour labour.

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The European companies claim to be developing local areas and economies, but instead trap workers in cycles of low wages and uncertainty.  

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The Ferrero workers' claim for fixed hours was successful and they won their case on 22 October 2020.

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