Dr. Michelle O'Sullivan:

With regard to the criticism of the work, the report was an examination of zero hour contracts. The Department was keen to get a picture of what was going on in the country. It was the first study so there was a total lack of knowledge in the area beforehand. The first thing we did as researchers was to try to define what are zero hour contracts. One definition is in the Organisation of Working Time Act. When one looks at the international experience of zero hour contracts, what we are talking about is zero hour work. It would have been irresponsible of us to look at one particular type of contract and not the reality of what is zero hour work. The intention of the study by the Department was to see if there was a problem in the area and whether protections should be extended to groups of people or not. What we are looking at when we talk about zero hour work is to what extent the work is precarious. Precarious work is work where there is a lack of income security, job security and where one has a lack of control over one's work. When looking at zero hour work, to look at just the narrow definition contained in the Organisation of Working Time Act would really only have been half a report because we would have ignored the people who are living the reality of zero hour work.

We also tried to look at why this work is happening. It is happening because of the narrow definition of zero hour contracts in the Organisation of Working Time Act. Employers have said in the interviews and report that it is costly for them to produce zero hour contracts because there is compensation attached to it. That is one of the motivating factors for formulating zero hour work under a different name. As the first national study, we tried to do that. We made a series of recommendations which would continue that work in terms of data collection.

We understand there are agreements with some larger employers particularly in retail but there has not been any significant national study yet on how they are progressing. There are pros and cons of having banded hour agreements. To focus on just one particular type of employer and one particular type of sector would take away from the picture of other people doing zero hour work. They have benefits and are one of the types of good practice, which have been used by other companies, that we recommended at the end of our report. Banded hour contracts are a preferable form of working to zero hour contracts, in which there is very little balance between the flexibility of an employer and that of a worker. Banded hour contracts give an element of predictability to workers. It is the cause of all the problems for people doing zero hour work.