Contracts without specific working hours (zero-hours contracts)

Information

A zero-hours contract of employment is a type of employment contract where the employee is available for work but does not have specified hours of work. If you have a zero-hours contract this means there is a formal arrangement that you are required to be available for a certain number of hours per week, or when required, or a combination of both. Employees on zero-hours contracts are protected by the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 but this does not apply to casual employment.

The Act requires that an employee under a zero-hours contract who works less than 25% of their hours in any week should be compensated. The level of compensation depends on whether the employee got any work or none at all. If the employee got no work, then the compensation should be either for 25% of the possible available hours or for 15 hours, whichever is less. If the employee got some work, they should be compensated to bring them up to 25% of the possible available hours.

For example, if you are required to be available for 20 hours per week, but you got no work, you would be entitled to be compensated for 15 hours or 25% of the 20 hours (that is, 4 hours), whichever is the less. In this case, 4 hours is the lesser amount. If, on the other hand, you got 3 hours work out of the 20, you would be entitled to be compensated by 1 hour to bring you up to 25% of the contract hours.