Great British Recovery?

I maybe a free market but very unfair, what about individuals freedom to be able to work decent hours. not all of us want handouts . at one end of the scale you've got people earning £40,000 a year and getting tax credits which are supposedly to help them work while paying for childcare etc and people on zero hours. If you are on zero hours you cant get tax credits because you need to earn at least 30 hours a week or 16 if you've got kids. In other words those that work full time get state benefits and those who are struggling get nothing just their measley wages . If I had £40,000 I would refuse tax credits. The whole system stinks and Ivanhoe if you support this you should be ashamed.

Ivsnhoe where are you coming from?

I am not a top earner with tax cuts, but then neither do I have 'means tested handouts'.... so it's not everyone else.

Your statements would have more credence if you thought more about what you are trying to say instead of blindly following some party line.

But which party, that is what is puzzling me.

I did not realise that people on £40,000 could get tax credits. I am sure one of my family members earns less than that and is not entitled?

Silverfish

I don't talk bollocks, I am not complacent as you have called me, you are also arrogant in assuming you know my history or background.

I am sorry you cannot get the employment you are obviously striving to get. I have tried to say that whilst zero hours does not suit you and your circumstance it does suit another person's lifestyle or family commitments. Now if you find that talking bollocks and being complacent then that is something we will have to disagree on.

Ok we can disagree. you are obviously taking sides in this as you seem on the side of those who are happy to work zero hours and all I'm saying is that those who are happy to do this are usually people with more than one income therefore I make the assumption that you are one of them. I don't know or care what your circumstances are but surely you can see my point or are you being arrogant too. Bollocks to you too

Now you're just getting silly, Silverfish...

Ana, darling, get real and look around you in the real world

Silverfish, sweetheart, I notice that on another thread you say that you are "just in a mood for stirring up the conversation"

Having fun?

Oh, she's gone to bed!

Almost, Im just waiting for my servant to turn back the quilt and bring my cocoa. goodnight

Is that what it's like in the real world, then? Oh, I am soooo deprived...

Goodnight, silverfish, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.

Silverfish

Yes I am taking the side of my husband who took a zero hours job to enable us to help care for my father . The haulage company he worked for were brilliant to us.

Yes I am taking the side of the carers who helped look after him and chose to work zero hours to work in with their child care, family commitments. They could have taken hourly contracted work at anytime and the company would have loved it.

Yes I am taking the side of my friends children who, like my daughter did once, work zero hours contracts because they want to help put themselves through uni.

Bollocks was used by yourself in a previous post which you made personal. It doesn't bother me particularly to be honest but I'm b----y sure I will let it be known I didn't think much of it.

The mystery of the Uk economy is revealed unto me. The richest in the country have got a lot richer this year (shttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/sunday-times-rich-list-wealthiest-britons-own-a-third-of-the-nations-wealth-9391634.html)
Meanwhile Polish labourers are being paid a couple of quid an hour or forced to work for nothing (file on four this afternoon)

Sorry those Polish labourers are in London

Pogs , I see your point of view, you are saying that your family opted for zero hours to fit in with family commitments, but what about the thousands of people like me who don't have that choice and who have to take zero hours like I did . took on a job just six weeks ago and zero hours again but there was nothing else I could get. Ive got professional training but there are no jobs for older workers. I would love it if I had another income/lottery win/inheritance so I don't have to work zero hours. If someone chooses to work zero hours they must have another income or be like students and have parents to pay the bills.

No-one seems to understand the sheer frustration of sitting at home wasting time and earning nothing.

you also used the word bollocks to me several times yesterday so I reckon we are even now.

silverfish do you have any creative skills (like knitting, sewing, or craftwork) of any kind that can be done at home and sold on the likes of Folksy ? You could be doing that while you waited for work.

It's not just here that it is happening, Silverfish. DD2 works zero hours in Australia, usually the same numbers of hours per week and the pay is good, but obviously no holiday pay, no sick pay and the insecurity of not having a permanent contract. She also has to pay her rent and all bills and doesn't have family nearby either. Of course, she is younger and doesn't seem to worry about it as we do.

It is not a good way to go, suits the firms but not the workers in most cases.

thank you Elegran and rose, for not being so judgemental. I am quite crafty but I don't think good enough for selling to others. I will just have to try to find regular work, im not scared of hard work even cleaning loos, ive done it all.

Have a look on Folksy. Not all the things on sale are glossy. Looking "handmade" can be an advantage.

Silverfish

You have obsessed with my posts that have pointed out zero hour contracts do work for some people, for varying reasons and I appreciate your last post and take it with the spirit it was hopefully intended.

I urge you to read my posts again. Take my post of May 7th 10.52. I said 'It is however correct to say this has become a problem in more and more cases and it is right for them to be looked at seriously'. I made further reference to companies using zero hour contracts to avoid their responsibilities to it's staff and paying taxes and entitlements associated with employment law.

I am very sorry that we have had these undignified spats but I would never have used the word bollocks had you not used it initially in your post of May 7th 20.48.

I have never had the intention to make light of your work experience. I totally accept that there are times when we find life is, to put it bluntly, a bloody hard slog and exhausting.

I have been there myself. If you read a thread from a while ago you would have noted I posted that when my daughter was born we were so hard up I sold some of our wedding presents at Leicester Market and did jumble sales to keep a stall going for 8 years until I took a job as a receptionist and got back into the work place. We sold 5 gold rings to buy me a coat when I was pregnant and the jeweller gave us £29. I went straight across the road to C&A and bought a coat. The next week I stood in front of the jewellers and one of my rings was on sale for more than they gave me, I wept.

So please can we try and stop for a moment and reflect on how our emotions have got the better hand of us and try to accept we are neither of us deliberately out to upset one another.

I would like to say (very quietly) that 35 years ago I worked for Norwich Union (now Aviva) as a part time clerical assistant. The part time bit refered to the fact I only worked when it was convenient to me - ie term times (not a lot in the way of child care then), and with the advantage that if an offspring was sick I wasn't penalised for not going in at a moments notice. No sick pay but some holiday pay after so many weeks (can't remember exactly).

Later I did the same at BT, only that was called temping, and it fitted in with my life and commitments. I also cleaned a teacher's house a couple of days a week and stuffed envelopes and knitted Aran sweaters for a local shop. Eventually the Offspring too had paper rounds and Saturday jobs at B&Q and Sainsburys. I suppose all these could now be classed as Zero Hours. They worked at the time for us in our circumstances, suiting both sides. Yes, my husband had a 'proper' job, but the money my jobs earned was very much needed.

Yes, Zero Hours can work, but as I see it the problem is that Zero Hours are being used too routinely for jobs which should really have permanent contracts, and are too one sided in favour of employers taking advantage of people like care assistants who should really have permanent jobs.

Even worse than zero hours is insidious growth of "self employed" . Some of you will have noted that the recent "improved employment figures" included a lot of people classed as newly self employed. I'm sure some of them are enthusiastic young and not so young entrepreneurs. But some of them are not.
example 1 - Has 2 degrees, 25, working in a museum "we have a freeze on new appointments. we'd like you to work on the project for which we have grant funding. but we're not going to offer you a temporary contract. You'll have to be self employed."
example 2 - young unemployed man offered job in this area but "will have to be self employed" accepted it despite being warned that the would be responsible for paying own tax bill at end of year, would have to pay own NI, would have any entitlement to benefits compromised if job ended, have no employment rights.
Unethical behaviour by employers both private and public sector.

There is always the other way selfish greedy employers get 'blood out of a stone'. They give workers part time hours say 9 or 10 hours contract but they get something like 60 hours a week and if the workers refuse they find they are put under pressure to do them. I know many workers such as certain supermarket colleagues, care workers fast food workers etc who are subject to this. They are exhausted and stressed, some of them like the extra money but most are just wanting to work normal hours. There is no work balance. I was talking to a colleague the other day and she was working 5 12 and 13 hour shifts in a row and does heavy lifting and filling shelves. She is a young married girl and hardly ever sees her husband. Another couple at the same shop do long opposite shifts and meet up outside with their child to hand over to the other one who is going home. they are rarely home together. What kind of home life is this. These long hours mean that the shop only pays holiday pay on the basic contracted hours and sick pay too. Greedly B......s