Zero-hours contracts: Labour guilty of hypocrisy?

Part of me wonders – why bother? Why not stay in bed? Weeks of plastic, tedious, risk-averse “campaigning” has achieved all but nothing . The polls’ verdict is more that it was a waste of everyone’s time, rather than anything enlightening about how we might all vote.

Does the endless flinging around of millions on this and billions on that really sway anyone at all? My hunch is that as humans it’s emotion and irrationality rather than shelling each other with stats – it’s the look of the thing, the feel, which counts.

Case in point in Glasgow this morning where Ed Balls stands in front of a placard which states: “Ban exploitative zero hour contracts.” Trouble is, the technicians doing the staging are on zero hour contracts.

I asked Mr Balls if this wasn’t hypocrisy? He talked about the evil of exploitative contracts. I interrupted to ask if this wasn’t hypocrisy? He suddenly became more animated and a burst of applause from the invited audience allowed the question to pass unanswered.

Odd – because Labour perhaps had the answer right there on the placard: “exploitative”. Everything hangs or falls by the meaning of that word.

The technicians at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow are employed by an “arm’s length” organisation via the city council.  They are indeed on zero-hours contracts but – whaddya know? – the council says these contracts are not “exploitative”.

Labour have the get-out in that word “exploitative” and what that may or may not mean?  In reality today’s stagehands are not watching the phone daily to see if they can work – but do have to do so on a fortnightly turnaround which makes planning family life, for instance, extremely difficult.

Exploitative? Probably not. But that nuance may well be lost in the campaigning where the look of the thing, the feel, is what counts.

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