Originally Posted by
Tuerto
How wrong you are. What are your wife's circumstances? Are you on the bones of your arse, living week to week, bringing up young children, having to sort out childcare etc? If not, then a zero hour contract to top up the funds as and when is very suitable for someone who doesn't want to, or need to commit to full time hours.
Here's my experience. I was self employed (plasterer) while my kids were young, my missus only worked 11 hours a week. I did pretty well, long hours though and plenty of travelling. I decided to get myself a second job close to home in order to supplement my income and have some money when i had to wait 30-60 days for payment to arrive. I decided to take on some support-care work, about 20 hours a week, as well as my day job. I only worked evenings and the odd weekend.
Over the time i did the job, i worked with plenty of other workers on zero hour contracts, most of them women with young kids who would be out from 6.30 am until 10.30 pm. In that time they would get about 13 calls, £8,30 for an hour call, half of that for half hour, Worked out at about £80 with a 17 hour commitment, huge gaps in between calls with no pay, no pay for travel between calls, no pay for wear and tear on vehicle. Some women were doing this five days per week. When the subject was raised over secure contracts, all of the people i spoke to were unanimous in their opinion that they would much prefer fixed hours with a proper contract, so that they could have some family life with their kids and better pay and conditions.
Plenty of care workers would have regulars, those regulars represented money. If they died or went into hospital(which happened constantly) then that would represent a huge loss of hours for the worker as the care agency would not replace the service user for months, if ever.