Santander skirts ‘zero-hour’ contracts with one-hour deals

Revelations that the high-street bank Santander employs hundreds of people on “one-hour contracts” that guarantee them just one hour of work per month prompted questions in parliament and a move by the bank to change its job adverts.

Santander employs 371 “on-call customer service advisers (CSA)” on one-hour contracts, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

They are used to supply cover to branch staff and account for roughly 10 per cent of the company's 3,731 customer service advisers in the UK — a new twist on the sorts of jobs being created in Britain's post-financial crisis flexible labour market.

“You’ll be guaranteed and paid for at least one hour per month/12 hours per year,” a recent advert for one of these roles said. “Additional hours will vary according to branch requirements and will most likely be a mix of pre-arranged and short-notice cover, so flexibility around hours and location is essential.”

Three employment lawyers contacted by the Financial Times said they had not encountered such a contract before.

Santander said that it was proud of treating employees in a “simple, personal and fair way” and did not use any “zero-hour contracts”, a type of contract that does not guarantee any hours of work at all.

When asked how “one-hour contracts” differed materially from zero-hours contracts, Santander said they gave people “full employment rights with no obligation to accept additional hours or exclusivity”. It said that the bank required the workers to work a minimum 12 hours a year to “ensure they received the minimum training and updates required for our banking environment”.

Damian Green, work and pensions secretary, was asked about the Santander contracts in the Commons on Monday following the FT revelation. He cited a survey suggesting that workers on zero-hour contracts had “above-average job satisfaction”.

However, David Hanson, a former Labour minister, said he thought a one-hour contract was “simply unacceptable” in the modern day. “I hope the government condemns Santander and does not allow adverts of that kind in local jobcentres,” he said.

Santander said that its unions were aware of the one-hour contracts and “supportive” of the flexibility. The bank emailed the FT a quote from the general secretary of Advance, a Santander-specific union, which said that the contracts “should not be confused with zero-hours contracts” and were “ideal for students and colleagues such as maternity leavers”.

CWU, the bank’s other union, did not respond to the FT’s request for comment.

Santander said it would change its job adverts to make them “clearer” because they could be “misinterpreted”.

In the years after the financial crisis, there was a sharp increase in the use of zero-hours contracts as employers sought flexibility in their staffing levels to meet fluctuations in demand.

Critics of the contracts say they have left workers with insecure incomes and few rights; the term “zero-hours” became associated with employers such as Sports Direct, which came under heavy fire from MPs for its working practices.

The previous coalition government rejected calls to ban zero-hours contracts, saying that the flexibility was valuable to workers as well as employers. Ministers did ban “exclusivity clauses”, which prevented zero-hours workers from accepting work from other employers.

The latest official data show that there were 905,000 people on zero-hours contracts in the final quarter of 2016, 101,000 more than the previous year.

However, the growth of these contracts has slowed. Analysts believe that this may be because workers have better options now that unemployment is at the joint-lowest level since the 1970s, or because employers are worried about hurting their reputations as zero-hours contracts have become stigmatised.

“We offer opportunities for our on-call CSAs to change to full- or part-time hours where there are vacancies,” Santander said. “However, many opt to remain on the on-call contracts as a lifestyle choice for the flexibility these roles offer.” On average, people on these contracts actually work 386 hours a year.

Melanie Onn, the Labour MP for Great Grimsby, has written to Nathan Bostock, Santander UK's chief executive, to ask for more information.

“In an organisation of the size and magnitude of Santander, I find it highly unusual that the use of casual labour is an accepted form of employment . . . In the circumstances where cover is required for certain roles, it would be usual to have a “bank” or “pool” of people who are called upon . . . without tying them to a contract,” she wrote.

“Alternatively, taking into account the size of the organisation, it would be possible to provide short-term, temporary cover with existing staff.”

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: “While working on non-traditional contracts may give some people the flexibility they want — helping them fit work around childcare or studying, for example — for others, insecure employment makes it more difficult to balance the books.

“A steady income makes people feel secure and they must be able to choose the type of contract that allows them to achieve this.”