Zero hours contracts - what you need to know

Over the last few years, zero-hours contracts have gone from being an oddity to almost the norm, especially in careers such as the food industry and admin work.

They mean staff work (and are paid) only as and when they are needed, usually at short notice. Sometimes, there's no work at all.

There's no legal definition of a zero-hours contract, but the Chartered Institute for Professional Development defines it as follows:

"An agreement between two parties that one may be asked to perform work for another but there is no minimum set contracted hours. The contract will provide what pay the individual will get if he or she does work and will deal with circumstances in which work may be offered and possibly turned down."

And they're on the rise. According to the Office for National Statistics, around one on fifty people in the UK as a whole was employed on a zero-hours basis in 2013, rising to more than a quarter in the food and accommodation trade.

Flexibility?

Those in favour cite the flexibility such contracts give employers and, to a lesser extent, workers. Last February, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said they could be "positive and helpful" and "allow employers to be competitive in response to market trends".

But not everybody's so happy. Stephen Thompson recently wrote an open letter to his stepson's employer, JD Wetherspoon, and posted it on Facebook, where it's been shared tens of thousands of times. In it, he lambasts the company for exploiting his stepson, who, he says, frequently has to walk four miles for just one hour's work.

"Furthermore, if he attends expecting a longer shift this is sometimes not the case as he is sent home if trade is slack," he writes. "He, your employee takes all the risk, you the employer take none."

But what are your rights on a zero-hours contract?

Because there's no official definition in law, there's a great deal of variation, and it pays to look very carefully at the individual contract. Pay arrangements and benefits, for example, can vary from company to company, and some zero-hours contracts oblige the worker to take any work that's offered, while others don't.

Zero hour workers are entitled to the same holiday entitlement as anyone else and the national minimum wage applies - although some employers have been accused of bypassing this by refusing to count travelling time as part of the hours worked.

They are entitled to maternity, paternity and adoption pay, but not to the leave that normally goes with them - or to statutory sick pay. Nor do they have the right to request flexible working or time off for emergencies. They also lack automatic protection from unfair dismissal, don't have to be given a minimum notice period to terminate their employment or have the right to statutory redundancy pay.

All these restrictions apply where the person, as in most zero-hours contracts, is classified as a worker, rather than an employee. While this might seem a meaningless distinction, it actually has implications in law - for example, being an employee gives you statutory notice rights.

Can you work elsewhere?

It's worth noting, though, that depending on how the work relationship continues, workers can often argue that they should count as employees, for instance in cases where they can be disciplined if they don't accept all the hours offered.

Some zero-hours contracts currently prevent the individual from working for other organisations - even when the employer has no work on offer themselves. This is regarded by many as particularly exploitative - and may be changed soon, as business secretary Vince Cable has promised to ban such exclusivity clauses.

Labour wants to go further, with a ban on any contracts that can be classed as exploitative, and a promise that people will be given a fixed-hours contract if they work regular hours for a year.

This, though, won't answer all the criticisms of zero hours contracts. Staff don't know from week to week what they're going to earn, and can find it impossible to get mortgages or bank credit. Earnings are generally far lower than for those on standard contracts, and many zero hours workers are forced to turn to benefits to make up the difference.

"The only way [my stepson] can survive on such grindingly low wages is by getting benefits top ups," Mr Thompson writes to JD Wetherspoon.

"Clearly your business model requires that the public purse subsidise your employee's wages. This to my mind makes your firm and others like you one of the benefit scroungers we hear so much about these days."

Read more on AOL Money:

People better off unemployed than on zero-hours contracts

Clampdown on zero-hours contracts

Zero hours deals 'undermine trust'