‘It was doing my head in’: Low‐paid multiple employment and zero hours work

Abstract

This article explores the lived experiences and working time complexities of low-paid workers in legitimate multiple employment and zero hours work. Based on detailed qualitative research, these workers have 2, 3, 4, 5 and even different jobs out of necessity due to low-pay, unpredictable working hours and employment precarity. The research reveals that workers need to be available for (potential) work at any point but may not actually be offered any hours, which we argue constitutes unremunerated labour time. The findings highlight a densification of working time with zero hours work as employers maximize productive effort into specifically numbered, demarcated and minimized working hours, which tightens the porosity of labour. There is a dual fragmentation and individualization of employment, as these workers traverse multiple, expansive, complex and dynamic temporalities of work. This study identifies new economic and temporal indeterminacies of labour, which fundamentally transform the employment relationship and wage-effort bargain.

Industrial relations, the New Right and the praxis of mismanagement

“…Fragmentation relates to increases in the likes of offshoring, outsourcing, sub-contracting, bogus self-employment and the general employer search for labour flexibility (core and periphery labour) and cost-cutting in an era of financialization. Labour, and the costs associated with it, has been increasingly externalized and thereby fragmented, resulting in more insecure, informal and precarious employment patterns for many, including zero-hours contracts (Clark and Colling, 2018;Felstead et al, 2020;Smith and McBride, 2023).…”

“…Employers make a strategic choice to engage precarious and vulnerable labour, usually migrants, extracting competitive advantage through a low-cost, low productivity business and HR model based on labour exploitation, intensification and long hoursassociated with the tendency towards informalization. Likewise, Smith and McBride (2023) examine the lived experiences of workers necessarily engaged in multiple employments in low-paid sectors, many of whom have 2, 3, 4, 5 and even 7 different jobs out of necessity due to low pay, unpredictable working hours and employment precarity. The scale of employer mismanagement from the selected contemporary illustrations shows the extent (and limits) of coercive control and mistrust elaborated by Fox.…”