catpower1980: Don't know how unemployment laws work in US but here, you would lose your unemployment benefits or social welfare rights depending on the circumstances of your contract break up. If you break up and then can't sign a new contract because the employer changed his mind you're fucked up.
Maybe the social security system is then flawed, and something like
basic income wouldn't produce similar problems? Then maybe even small oddjobs (zero hour contracts even) would make sense, as it would all be additional money on top of the basic income.
In Finland it is mainly the Green Party (the environmentalists) who seem to be pushing the idea, not sure why others aren't. Maybe they are afraid it will cost too much. Still, in general I like the idea that doing even small jobs could make sense then.
catpower1980: Also, I guess those contracts are mainly spread in under-qualified sectors such as cleaning, retails, etc. It becomes a problem when a whole job sector runs on subpar-contracts and you can't apply for more stable jobs.
Naturally it is more common in fields where there are lots of potential employees.
Of course it is nice to get a full-time contract, but since the amount of available work is limited, only few would get such, and rest would be unemployed. Not sure which is preferable: dividing the available work so that 10% does it full time and rest are unemployed, or e.g. 80% do some of it and only 20% are completely out of job.
The exclusivity and full availability clauses in zero hour contracts sound quite bad though. The employee should be allowed to seek other work too at the same time, if the current employer can't give any guarantees of the work hours.
