ZERO hours contracts can be beneficial to both employers and employees within the hospitality industry, providing both are honest with each other.
That’s the message from Willie Macleod, executive director for Scotland at the British Hospitality Association (BHA), who said the recently-maligned contracts can be useful in certain situations.
“Employees and employers should be up front with each other,” he told SLTN.
“If that’s the contract you’re offering to an employee most employees would weigh that up and say ‘am I prepared to be bound by this?’ For some people it is a convenient way of doing it – people like students, for example, that might want flexibility. They may want a bit more certainty that they’ll be called upon to work, rather than just purely casual staff who are used for peak times or in emergencies.”
SLTA chief executive Paul Waterson agreed that the contracts can be useful for certain companies, though said he was not aware of any in place within the Scottish trade. But he added that in his own business, the Golden Lion Hotel in Stirling, zero hours contracts are something “I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable with at all”.
