Introduction

One explanation for an apparent increase in the overall size of the UK workforce is that it conceals what the TUC describes as a “crisis of underemployment” — a growing army of workers with irregular hours and falling wages. TUC research shows that by 2012, the number of involuntarily underemployed workers rose to 3.3 million, up from 2.3 million in early 2008. More than a million of these workers are now thought to be working on zero-hours contracts, according to new research carried out in 2013 by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development. Understanding the employment status and legal rights of these workers is a key issue for reps and is the topic of this Chapter.